Omo-Ettu, Telecom Expert Values Nitel at $2.2 billion

Engineer Titi Omo-Ettu, chief executive, The Executive Cyberschuul (Tec), has put the total assets of Nigeria Telecommunications limited (Nitel), first National carrier at $2.2 billion and is willing to undervaluation of the carrier.

Omo-Ettu gave the breakdown of the carrier’s fixed service license at $0.2billion , mobile service license $0.3billion, while he placed long distance transmission license at $1.2 billion and Nitel’s right of way at $0.5 billion.

According to him, the total figure is based on what the four segments are capable of generating in the future and not the present worth of the infrastructure in monetary terms.

He is a man who should know having provided extensive research and contributed to the intellectual growth of the telecoms industry.

Omo-Ettu argued that the major valuation component of a First National Operator is principally the worth of its license saying that all other components of its valuation when aggregated will amount to very little compared to the worth of the license.

Although the investment of subscribers to Nitel services has been affected adversely with the present position of the company, its physical assets and real estate destroyed due to neglect , the career of its workforce scuttled among others , Omo Ettu insisted that the worth of Nitel has not depreciated and that the actual worth of Nitel is in its status as a first national operator which primary duty is to provide the platform for other telecommunications operators to ride on and not the total worth of its infrastructure.

Omo Ettu said his intervention became necessary as another round of privatization process of Nitel has been announced by the Bureau of Private Entreprises (BPE) and that he is skeptical about the BPE being capable of handling the privatization process going by precedence.

He criticized the Federal Government’s insistence on shopping for core investor who will buy the 51 percent equity of the company and also have the financial and technical muscle to steer the organization. Omo-Ettu believes that any body who has those credentials will not like to do business with the government as private people don’t have the temperament do business with government because of boardroom politics.

Omo-Ettu is a quintessential telecommunications engineer and consultant, and worked for Nigerian Telecommunications from 1974 until he voluntarily retired into private practice in 1991.

While in NITEL, he specialised in digital technology; was actively involved in provision of services in the field, led teams in network maintenance and network planning, and was project manager and contracting officer for implementation of several Telecommunications development projects.