Forward
The Privatisation of NITEL is an essential story to tell if only to serve as a guide to future generations and to answer questions about why NITEL with its potential and dominant incumbent status for decades, was not able to rise to attain the status that some other incumbents did.
In the years following the advent of the telephone in Nigeria in the late 19th Century up to the late nineties, it was usual to have only one monopoly service provider for telecommunication services. The company was typically powerful, dominant and in most cases not run with optimum efficiency. Apart from countries such as the USA that had a multiple operator environment, most other countries of the world had only one dominant operator. The wave of market liberalization that commenced in the eighties saw many monopoly markets give way to multiple operator markets. In some countries such as was the case in Nigeria, the wave of market liberalization was preceded by commercialization of the incumbent operator. NITEL was commercialised in 1985 but hardly had the autonomy that goes with such commercialised entities. The management and board of the commercialised NITEL, were hardly ever given the necessary autonomy to run the organization and successive government functionaries saw NITEL as a milking cow.
One important success factor in any business enterprise is the quality of leadership of that enterprise. In the case of NITEL, most of the appointments of successive Managing Directors, Directors and General Managers were more politically motivated than any consideration for competence, qualification and experience. Perhaps, the most devastating blow on NITEL as an organization was the prolonged privatization process. During the years, between 2001 and 2009, the institutional structures of NITEL were dismembered. During that period NITEL had about 10 MDs, an average of more than one MD per year. This tells the whole story about the level of instability in the organsiation. It is therefore no wonder that NITEL became a shadow of its former self, before it was eventual sold in 2014. It was probably during the years 2001—2009 that the greatest looting and dismemberment of NITEL happened.
It is therefore my pleasure to write the forward to this book in support of the effort of my friend and ace ICT Reporter and Editor, Mr Aaron Ukodie that captures the NITEL story in this well researched, factual and vivid form.
Reading through, I am convinced that the first big lesson to learn is on how undue interference by government functionaries in the affairs of an enterprise can lead to the failure of the organization. The second lesson is that during the process of privatization, the privatization body should not be involved in any way in the running of the enterprise.
The third lesson is that companies slated for privatization and for which new core investors are being sought, should not be stopped from making critical new investments and be allowed to be overtaken by their competitors. The fourth lesson is that a privatization process that stretches for too long is a recipe for the failure of the institution. It demotivates and demoralizes the employees and ultimately leads to the exodus of the high performing employees to competitors.
I personally believe that NITEL could have risen again if the privatisation process had succeeded.
Dr Ernest Ndukw is former Executive Vice Chairman, NCC, Chairman, Open Media and Vice Chairman, National Broadband Council. He is Director, Centre for Infrastructure Policy, Regulation and Advancement (CIPRA), Lagos Business School.
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