An official of Nigeria’s federal ministry communication technology has revealed that the nation’s much anticipated national rural telephony project will take off in April. The project will bring telephony services to rural areas across Nigeria.
Engr John Ayodele, who is the director of Posts and Telecommunications at the Comm Tech ministry said the ministry would soon handover $200million project to the telecoms companies that submitted the winning bid as soon as the action is approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) of Nigeria.
“The Ministry of Communications Technology is committed to conclusion of this transaction. We have included it in our 2014 budget of the ministry and we are waiting for budgetary approval. When our budget for the year is approved, all that we need to do is to get federal executive council to rectify President Goodluck Jonathan’s approval of the transaction.
Once all these are done, we are looking at handing over the networks to the preferred bidders by April this year,” Ayodele stated.
The project was conceived in 2001 by the former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration. Three Chinese companies – ZTE Corporation, Huawei and Shagai Bell – were initially awarded the contract but government cancelled the contract after the three companies failed to deliver the first phase of the project at agreed period.
The Nigerian government later transferred the first phase of the project to five indigenous telecommunications companies namely Key Communications Limited, Suburban Broadband Limited, Voicewares Network Limited, Gicell Wireless Limited and Hezonic
