FROM NITEL TO NTEL: UNDERSTANDING AUTONOMYAND CAPACITY ISSUES IN NIGERIA'S TELECOMMUNICATIONS PRIVATIZATION

SALAWU, Ibrahim O. (PhD)

FROM NITEL TO NTEL: UNDERSTANDING AUTONOMYAND CAPACITY ISSUES IN NIGERIA'S TELECOMMUNICATIONS PRIVATIZATION

Date

2016-10-15

Authors

SALAWU, Ibrahim O. (PhD)

Publisher

Ilorin Journal of Business and Social Sciences

Abstract

Transfer of State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) to private hands is a public management strategy that has gained considerable followership in the 21st century governance. Divergent views have been advanced about privatization's inherent ability to boost efficiency and reduce wasteful psyche of SOEs. Nigeria's tortuous privatisation of the state owned telecommunications outfit (NITEL) and its subsidiaries which recently culminated in the transfer to the NATCOM consortium after over a decade of convoluted attempts leave much to be desired. This spate of unsuccessful takeovers has thrown up the issue of professional competence in the privatisation process. This paper is an attempt at interrogating factors behind the apparent inability to stick to a reasonable turnaround— time to forestall inevitable loss of value of NITEL. It also questions its capacity to skillfully deliver taking into cognisance the need to operate with some level of . independence /Autonomy. This is in addition to criticisms of non-performance of about eighty percent of enterprises privatized by the BPE. To achieve these objectives, the paper quantatively affirms a hypothesized notion about the relationship between Autonomy and Capacity to deliver on NITEL's privatisation. As the new owners of NITEL takes over, the paper makes recommendations targeted at fine tuning the process in the area of Autonomy and Capacity issues to avert any further “reverse waves”. The mixed method approach is adopted in this paper. The quantitative section has relied on the Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20.0 to process the responses to information provided via questionnaires and interviews elicited from within the top brass of the BPE and a broad spectrum of other stakeholders. The Spearman's rho was used to show relationship between the variable of Autonomy and Capacity. The qualitative part used the reflective narrative method of analysis to complement the primary data.