Pentascope Seeks Miracle for Nitel

The Dutch contract-managers of Nitel, Pentascope, officially clocked a year in May managing one of Africa’s oldest public telcos. It was an anniversary devoid of any celebration. The Rein Zwolsman led Pentascope management team has in the last 12 months battled with keeping its job as well as getting Nitel moving on track.

Pentascope’s contract deal with the Public Bureau for Enterprises (BPE) had come under stringent attack from the communications ministry. The Nigeria’s Minister for Communication Cornelius Adebayo as are many other critics considered the deal skewed in a manner that unduly favours Pentascope. But that controversy which put the privatisation midwife (BPE) on the spot in the media appears to have simmered.

Pentascope has since began cleaning up the mess within Nitel even as it embark on expansion drive to increase the number of lines on a network that had for over a decade not been able to build one single switch. About 250,000 FWA lines are to be rollout in Lagos. It would signal its most frontal attack against private telecom operators who have taking over a market that was once Nitel’s biggest revenue earner. Lagos provided over 80 per cent of  Nitels’s annual revenue some years back. Now the PTOs are everywhere.

Nitel is haunted by a past of marked inefficiency, poor market image, zero customer relationship and cash insolvency. These are problems that emasculated the public telco. It could not play against several agile and aggressive new players.  When Pentascope took over last year and address the Nigerian media for the first time, one statement out of several stuck: “We shall perform no miracle.”

One year after, Pentascope itself is convinced that it had taken only a miracle to tackle some of Nitel’s numerous problems. A small fraction of the huge debt of over N20 billion owed the network by government ministries and private companies have been recovered. A pre-paid platform has been put in place to end the debt scourge that has been part of the telco in its over 60 years of existence. There is improved public image. Some level of patronage is expected from a few local banks in from of loan syndication to allow the network rollout more lines.

Sack Letters

But the telco is still hounded by problems Zwolsman assured would be solved before Pentascope contract period expires. It has already used up a year out of three. Pentascope enjoys considerable freedom to run Nitel but government unduly influence is not completely tamed.  What to do with Nitel’s excess unskilled workforce is a dicey issue for Pentascope to handle.

Pentascope needs to slice off a good chunk of its unskilled workers and get more skilled hands on board. But it appears to lack the stamina to face up with the likely backlash from sacking ‘the un-needed.’  However, it must take that decision, a Presidency source revealed adding that the President shares the firm belief that those not needed “in the place should be allowed to go.”

Downsizing has been carried out in several government ministries and agency but not without hullabaloos.

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