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Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) yesterday said it has
formally written to Omen International Limited, the reserve bidder in the
ill-fated bid for the national telecoms carrier, Nigerian Telecommunications
Limited (NITEL) and its mobile subsidiary, MTel, to take over the company.

Spokesman of the Bureau, Chukwuma Nwoko, said the company was
invited to come forward to come forward to re-validate its bid to give the
Federal Government the right to commence negotiations with its management to
take up the offer for the privatisation of the company.

Omen International Consortium had emerged the reserved bidder
during the February 16, 2010 financial bid exercise organised by the BPE and
supervised by the National Council on Privatization (NCP) with an offer price
of $956 million.

Several deadlines

Consequently, the Bureau said it has also written to New
Generation Consortium indicating that its former status as preferred bidder for
the national carrier had lapsed, following its inability to pay up 30 per cent
bid security for its $2.5 billion offer at the expiration of several deadlines.

The bid security, which involved the payment of $750 million
within ten calendar days of receiving NCP’s letter of notification of the
approval for its selection as preferred bidder, expired on December 21, 2010.

But, in the correspondence, the BPE said the invitation of the
reserve bidder was in accordance with the provision of Section 3.4.3 of the
Request for Proposal (RFP) sent to all bidders for the privatisation of the
telecommunications outfit, which give bidders a maximum of six months validity
after submission, except bid proposal is extended.

“Since your bid was submitted February 16th, 2010, it expired
August 15th, 2010. We, therefore, wish to invite you to revalidate your bid
bond of 4th April, 2010, if you are still interested in the transaction,” the
bureau said in the letter to Omen Consortium.

It was gathered that the decision by BPE to invite Omen
Consortium was sequel to the adoption of the proposal of the ad-hoc committee
constituted to review the confusion that trailed the sale, which had
recommended either the invitation of the reserve bidder to come forward and
take up the bid, or for the bid process be made to start afresh.

Not much to cheer about

But according to Lanre Opayemi, an Abuja-based finance analyst,
“there is not much to cheer about the prospects of the invitation succeeding,
as Omen Consortium was also entangled in the controversy surrounding the
involvement of Minerva Group as financial advisers to two companies involved in
the bid, in violation of the bid guidelines.”

Mr. Opayemi said he would be surprised if Omen Consortium would
still be willing to go ahead with the transaction on the same terms and
conditions prior to the cancellation of the bid, as much has happened,
particularly concerning the valuation of the assets.