Government killed NITEL - Chief Fatoye

Chief Fatoye The story of NITEL as it is today is no doubt a sour one. But Chief Ezekiel Fatoye, one of the longest-serving Nigerian telecoms network management icons in Nigeria with over 51 years in the industry saw it through with NITEL from the cradle to the current state. In this interview with OLUWASEUN AYANTOKUN, he says the Federal Government killed the telecoms company. The former Executive Director of Multi-Links, who retired about a month ago, also shows concern for the first national carrier, suggesting the way out as he also speaks on other salient issues. Excerpts:

 

What is your general impression of the Nigerian telecoms sector today?
I think in fairness to the industry, the industry has done very well. When you compare it with other sectors, you can see the tremendous growth in the last few years. Nigeria has been adjudged one of the highest growing telecoms industry in the world, the highest being China , then, India and then, Nigeria, comes next. So, it has been very successful.

What would you say contributed to our getting here?
The road has been very rough for the telecoms industry in this country. When we look at the pre-independent period, the telecoms facilities were mainly meant for the British who were masters then; they were meant to facilitate their administration, not for commercial use. So, only very few people had telephone in those days and the telephones were purely bag wire and then, gradually we moved on to semi automatic, automatic, cross bars, cross points to digital which we have now and we are having the most sophisticated in this country now; we have come a very long way.

What role did you play in the setting up of NITEL?
The process I just explained to you happened in 1983. Then, nobody was talking about NITEL being created- it was not until the coup of Buhari in 1984, that was when the idea of creating NITEL came up with Murtala Abdullahi as the Minister of Communications at that time. When the idea of creating NITEL came up, I was a member of the committee under the chairmanship of Stanley, from the Ministry of Communications then. And we were looking at all the problems that will arise if we were going to merge: the problem of staff, the problem of equipment, division of labour and so many other things. We identified almost all the problems.

Then, I think all the number of staff of P&T plus NET was about 31,000. So, we narrowed what we might need to about 17,000; the problem was how to achieve that. So, we made a recommendation which was approved by the government and NITEL came into being, but, then, we partnered British Telecoms.

With where NITEL is today, what do you think government should have done that they did not do?
The problem started a long time ago. There is this belief that anything the government touches in business turns to failure and NITEL then was the only star company . They used NITEL’s typical success story, because the idea was to make NITEL commercial- it was not privatisation at that time, but to make it independent and profitable. Other companies of the government just faded out. Pick the Nigerian Railway, the Nigerian Airways, they all failed.

So, why should NITEL fail? Look at when the government decided to privatise it and gave it to BPE, I was angry when the BPE was saying NITEL didn’t worth anything. How can you say “what I’m selling does not worth anything”? If you are selling yams in the market and you say my yams are rotten, come and buy it, will anybody buy them?. That was one of the things that killed NITEL. When you look at other areas in which the government has also contributed, NCC (Nigerian Communications Communication) for instance. When we formed the NCC, it got itself busy awarding licences.They were not mindful of NITEL’s continuous existence, let me give you an example. As at the last count, it had issued about 74 licences, including VSAT licenses. And you know that in the past, why was NET successful while P&T was not? NET was successful because they looked on the commercial side and they were mindful of the tariffs. Then, the International tariff was high. When we took on NITEL, if you made a call and spent one day on the telephone, it is two kobo you will pay, you could stay there for ever. There is no way you can make it, you can’t even generate your salary if you continue that way.

Then I said let us change the pause, we then changed it and made the pause 2 kobo per pause after fifteen minutes pause. Thus we made it three minutes pause. That was when we were able to gain a little bit as far as local calls and trunk calls were concerned. Then VSAT people came, making International calls into NITEL without NITEL knowing and they were collecting the money and they were not paying NITEL. At that time, NITEL’ s revenue went from several billions to less than 20 per cent of what they were generating before and still going down.

I went to tell my friend in NITEL in those days that if your overall revenue is going down like this, it calls for a major enquiry to find out why. If government is causing you to fall, you call them to order. If they are giving licences to people who are making you to fail, you tell them. Actually, what should have been done was to give NITEL a window to operate for a certain period.

If NITEL had provided the backbone, the International services facilities- SAT3 and all those, such that when people come in, they are not allowed to go into that area, they are only allowed to link , pay NITEL and lease from NITEL, NITEL would have been able to survive. Why is Telkom South Africa doing well? They are doing well on their backbone, leasing it to the likes of MTN and other operators in that place, and they are making the money; they’ll take half of the money from those people and feel comfortable. That’s what should have been happening now in the case of NITEL, but that is lost.

Is all hope lost for NITEL?
Well, all I want to say is that now every operator is building its own fibre optic cable; Multi-Links has laid its own, MTN is laying, Glo is laying, Celtel is laying its own, Starcomms also is laying. So, who is going to lease circuit from NITEL? If they had planned it in such a way as to provide fibre cable to every corner of this country, and then, you provide sufficient capacity, International gateway, everybody that wants it would have just gone to NITEL: you just pay NITEL commission and you have your circuit- it can provide a number of subscribers service up to five million, 20 million, 100 million. But first, get your circuit from NITEL to carry these number of subscribers, so whatever you generate, NITEL would share it. NCC is a government parastatal that licensed these operators.

Are you now saying indirectly that the government itself killed NITEL?
That’s what I’m saying. Government contributed to the death of NITEL. In the death of NITEL, government played a major role. It is wrong to blame the staff there. NITEL had some of the best trained staff in this country.There’s no doubt every operator is reaping from what NITEL had. In fairness, when you look at Oshodi(NITEL training school at Oshodi). In those days, most people got their backgrounds from Oshodi. Oshodi was well planned to the extent that when you finished from there, some people went to university from there, some people got jobs outside of this country from there, some people went to various places from there and, at the end, came back to work for the firm.

Today, you’ll find that if we had developed that thoroughly, if the government had continued with the training, it would have been a different story. It looked to me like the government does not want NITEL to be successful- that is how I look at the whole thing- if not, why did Railway fail? Why did Nigerian Airways fail? It was the government, and everybody knows that. A lot of government agencies were not paying their bills. The government itself was not paying NITEL either for all the calls that were being made or in another form. The government was owing several billions to NITEL, how do you want it to survive that way? If you are selling and your family is just eating out of what you are selling, how will the business succeed? You don’t do business that way.

Both the Federal Government and Transcorp are looking for another investor as a solution to NITEL’s problem. What do you say to that?
Will that solve the problem? Nobody wants to put his money where he can’t get returns. Without additional substantial investment in the network, nothing can happen.

What do you think of doing now that you are in retirement? Politics?
Politics, I’ll say no. I’m too old to be a politician. I’ll soon start to do something. I can do consultancy for various organisations that need my service. Some of my colleagues are already calling me to come and do some things for them. I want to do farming also, something to keep me going. But not as big as the Ota Farm.

What are the high and the low points of your carrier?
The only thing that really upset me was the NETCOM House getting burnt. Having taken part in its construction and building in the 1970s, it was a big blow to me. The fire went through almost all the floors unchecked till the damage became a huge one. It was a big disaster to me. The high point was when I was appointed the General Manager of NITEL in the South-West. It was a big challenge to me, but I thank God that I was able to deliver.

How do you assess the Multi-Links that you are leaving behind?
I think there is no controversy about the success story of Multi-Links today.It has attracted an investor, that is Telkom South Africa. They have come with a vision and are capable of realising the vision more than what we can see now by expanding the network to every nook and cranny of this country. But personally, I don’t think I have left Multi-Links because people still come when there is any problem and I call Multi-Links to get it fixed.