Nigerian government owes billions to NITEL

World IT Report, Jul 22, 2003

As Nigeria's NITEL intends to take the centre stage in the country's GSM communication industry, landline subscribers nationwide owe it over N55 billion.

In an interview, published by The Guardian, NITEL's chairman, Dr. Aneze Chinwuba, said "over the years, the military regime never used to pay any NITEL bills. Right now, we are trying to recover those debts."

From all indications, much of the debt owed NITEL is from the government and the board chairman said the Secretary to the Government of the Federation was cooperating and "there is a circular that says all departments and ministries must pay their bills."

As part of efforts to ensure speedy recovery of those debts, he disclosed that NITEL would "engage private people to collect (debt) in the various territories so we hope to collect a lot of money. But there are some bad ones we can not collect."