Budget Delay Frustrates Rural Telephony Projects

The handover of the National Rural Telephony Projects (NRTPs) to preferred bidders has been stalled due to the delayed passage by the National Assembly and signing of this year’s budget by Mr. President, Ministry of Communications Technology has said.

NRTP which began under former President Olusegun Obasanjo administration about 12 years ago was to cover 218 local government areas in the first phase and provide over 636,256 Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) lines in the 774 local government areas and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in the second phase to bridge the digital divide between the urban and rural.

The preferred bidders in the various zones are, Suburban Limited (now Telefund Ltd) emerging for Abuja and Kaduna zones respectively; Gicel Wireless emerging for Bauchi Zone; Voicewares Networks Limited for Enugu Zone; Key Communications for Ibadan Zone and Hezonic for PortHarcount Zone. 

Engr. John Ayodele, director of Posts and Telecommunications in the ministry told Nigeria CommunicationsWeek that the ministry has not seen the budget as at of Thursday to know if the money it appropriated for the conclusion of NRTP transaction was approved by the National Assembly before it can commence the next stage of the handover.

“As I’m speaking with you, we at the ministry have not seen the budget as signed by the president to know if the allocation the ministry appropriated to the conclusion of NRTP transactions was approved before we can go to the next stage. The budget is the fundamental stage without which we cannot go to the next stage in the process,” he said.

He noted that the ministry had targeted April this year for the handover based on the assumption that the budget would have been passed at record time.

“Presently, the ministry is putting every logistic in top gear to ensure that, if the appropriation for NRTP is accommodated in the budget, it will be given the desired attention,” he added.

Nigeria CommunicationsWeek gathered that the next stage in the transaction with budgetary approval is getting federal executive council to rectify President Goodluck Jonathan’s approval of the transaction.

“Once all these are done, handing over the networks to the preferred bidders is realizable before the end of this year,” Ayodele stated.

It would be recalled that federal government had in July last year began concerted efforts towards concluding the transaction with the inauguration a new board which ha Senator Ken Nnamani as chairman.

Other members of the board are Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Senator Anyin Pius Anyim; Minister of Justice, Mohammed Bello Adoke (SAN); Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo- Iweala and former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi among others.

Engr. Gerry Ekesiani, chief executive officer, Voicewares Networks Limited, one of the operators of the project that won the contract to operate South-east and Benue exchange, said that stakeholders in the project which are operators and ministry of Communications Technology have engaged in meetings in order to resolve outstanding issues that are delaying full take off of the project.

Ekesiani added that the continued delay in the rollout of services is causing Association of Rural Telephony Operators of Nigeria (ARTON) financial losses while the equipment have become object of vandals and thieves.