NRTP: FG Mute on Kano Zone

The federal government has said that it is yet to take any decision on the Kano zone of the National Rural Telephony Project, a part of the little successful $200 million initiative conceived in 2001 to take telephony services to the rural areas, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek can now reveal.

Bid for the zone was canceled in 2006 after the companies that bidded for it failed to meet the requirements. The zone comprises Kano, Kaduna, Bauchi, Yobe, Gombe, Borno, Katsina, Zamfara, Sokoto, Kebbi, Jigawa and Plateau.

This puts to bed news making rounds that the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) and ministry of Communications Technology have opened fresh bids for the zone.

But Chukwuma Nwokoh, head of Communications, Bureau of Public Enterprise, said the agency has no role presently in the National Rural Telephony project.

Also reacting, Engr. John Ayodele, director, Telecom and Postal Services at the ministry of Communications Technology, said that the ministry has not taken any decision on the zone.

The reactions are coming on heels of claims by some members of Association of Rural Telephony Operators of Nigeria (ARTON), who claimed that the federal government has given them the go ahead to bid for Kano zone.

According to them, the guideline as contained in the fresh Request for Proposals (RFP), stipulates that only companies that emerged as preferred bidders in the first process are eligible to bid for the zone.

But Ayodele, explained that ARTON had made a proposal to the ministry that they are coming together as one network to operate in all the zones because of their mono-frequency.

According to him, ARTON also proposed that Kano zone should be included in the basket instead of handing it over to another operator.

Ayodele added that the ministry has not taken any decision on the proposal let alone taking it to federal government for consideration.

There has been renewed interest in the Rural Telephony Project after Nigeria CommunicationsWeek reported recently that the initiative is caught in a web of claims and counter charges.

NRTP which began under former President Olusegun Obasanjo administration about 11 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 areas.

The government had borrowed $200 million from the China Export Import (EXIM) Bank and provided 15 per cent counterpart funding of N5 billion to execute the project but years down the line, the project is yet to make an impact.

But stakeholders have also queried the credentials of the companies to take telephony to communities in Nigeria which have not heard a telephone ring or create over 10 million jobs directly.

Nigeria CommunicationsWeek gathered that the project was dead on arrival due largely to its faulty design and execution.

Three Chinese companies – ZTE Corporation, Huawei and Shangai Bell – were awarded the NRTP contract to take telephony services to the rural areas but ended up building only exchanges.

Sensing it could not run the project, the federal government in 2009, transferred the second phase to G-cell Wireless Limited, Hezomic Limited, Key Communications Limited, Suburban Broadband Limited and Voicewares Network Limited.

They were to build, operate and maintain the project in the different zones under the modeled of a Lease, Operate and Own (LOO) framework.

The selection process followed a competitive bidding process prescribed by the World Bank for privatization and concession transactions and undertaken in the most transparent manner possible.

The operators were supposed to operate the networks for a period of 10 years within which they would pay a specified amount of money to the government.

But awardees said that they are yet to take possession some four years after the award because of some bureaucratic bottlenecks.