Nitel/Mtel Creditors Beg FG for Payment

Creditors to the defunct Nitel/Mtel have sent a distress call to President Muhammadu Buhari seeking his intervention in the settlement of their claims.

Some of the creditors, who spoke with journalists in Abuja Tuesday, decried what they described as the unwarranted delay in the settlement of their claims.

According to them, NATCOM Consortium which acquired the core assets of Nitel/Mtel had fulfilled all its financial obligations relating to the transaction.

Alhaji Kabiru Usman, who spoke on behalf of the creditors, commended President Buhari for his positive intervention in ensuring upward review of the price paid by NATCOM for the liquidated national career.

Usman also commended the Liquidator of Nitel/Mtel, Olutola Senbore and Co. for the transparency so far demonstrated in the handling of the process.

“But we are surprised that despite President Buhari’s humane intervention and the Liquidator’s renown credibility, the creditors are being made to go through inexplicable frustration.

“Over 300 of us with verified claims have been waiting for settlement of these debts that have been outstanding for upward of 15 to 20 years before the last administration opted for guided liquidation of Nitel/Mtel.

“In May 2015, the Liquidator paid a paltry 15 percent of our entitlements to each creditor. Since then, we have waited endlessly for payment of the balance to enable us organise our lives and crumbling businesses.

“Many of the creditors have had their workers laid off due to liquidity crunch. Many others have been finding it difficult to pay their children’s school fees. There are some of us who cannot raise funds for medical treatment of sick family members and relations,” Alhaji Usman lamented.

Declaring support for President Buhari’s war against corruption and impunity, the creditors called on other public officials to complement the President’s determination to rid the system of corruption and impunity.

The creditors wondered why they were being subjected to endless frustration in the settlement of their legitimate claims when creditors of other privatized public firms like the PHCN and others were promptly settled.

“We are going to mobilise our members across the federation for a peaceful protest, to draw attention to our collective plight. The planned protest is not in any way a denunciation of the government.

“Rather, it is meant to send a strong message to whom it may concern, that any act of man’s inhumanity to fellow man shall not go unchallenged; if not by man, then by God,” Alhaji Usman added.

According to him, owing to problems of logistics occasioned by the current fuel scarcity in the country, the protest would be staged simultaneously in Abuja, Kano, Lagos, Yola, Port Harcourt and Enugu.

“Our members would be mobilised to join the protest in any of the six cities nearest to them after we might have agreed on a date,” he said.