Transcorp to invest $100 million in NITEL

Transnational (Transcorp), the majority stake holder in Nigerian Telecommunications (NITEL), announced on Tuesday that it will provide US$100 million into the telco's transformation over the next four months.

The investment is one of the interim transformation plans for NITEL before the sale of some equity to a new core investor, said Transcorp Group Managing Director Tom Iseghohi in a news statement.

Despite Transcorp's financial commitment to the project, NITEL will not be completely out of the woods, Iseghohi said. However, the move is meant to enable the company to attract the kind of core investor envisaged by Transcorp and the federal government.

"One of the key areas that needed a quick fix is the backbone and transmission infrastructure," he said, stressing that the current plan is expected to start yielding results four months.

Iseghohi also called boosting employee morale a top priority, an area that many NITEL employees urged him to address.

"Welcome to new NITEL, a NITEL where every staff is promptly paid. It is a new company where the quality of service matters and everybody works towards it. This move will return NITEL to its rightful place in the Nigerian telecom industry," Iseghohi said.

While Iseghohi said Transcorp is working assiduously to end the NITEL's monthly revenue leakage of about US$14.6 million, Abdulkarim Momoh, NITEL general manager in charge of audit, said it is necessary to probe the company's investment in continental submarine cable SAT-3. Momoh pointed out that although SAT-3 has the capacity to generate funds to run NITEL, only a paltry part of the capacity is being utilized.