|
NITEL’s chief finance officer, Moss, resigns
By Tom Chiahemen
Senior
Correspondent,
Abuja
The financial problem plaguing the Nigeria
Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) may have caused its Chief Finance Officer,
Mr. Graham Moss, to resign.
The resignation last Friday of the Briton,
who was appointed in March 2003 when the management of NITEL was contracted to
Pentascope of the Netherlands, will take effect from the middle of this month,
the Deputy General Manager (Corporate Communications), Tayo Ekundayo, has said.
During his 21-month stay at NITEL, Moss was
said to have been instrumental to efforts to turn the company around. “In
particular, Moss spearheaded the straightening of financial processes and the
streamlining of approval authority to facilitate the performance of official
duties,” said Ekundayo.
He was also said to have contributed to
cleaning and up-dating customers’ data base, as well as arranging and
facilitating a N14 billion syndicated loan facility with eight banks last
month.
Although his resignation is said to be
“due to reasons personal to him,” sources within the company hinted
that the resignation might be due to the outcome of last week’s meeting
of the board of directors.
It was learnt that the audited report
indicted the Pentascope team for mismanaging NITEL’s resources and
recording a loss of about N45 billion and other issues relating to the
company’s fortune.
In particular, the company was found to
have recorded a decrease of about N40 billion in profit, while its revenue
within the 22-month tenure of the Dutch managers also dropped by about 27 per
cent.
The management contract signed by
Pentascope has been generating controversies for the past one year.
The Chairman, Senate Committee on
Communications, Baba Tela, criticised the company’s performance.
The House of Representatives only recently
queried the choice of the Dutch firm and its competence to be able to turn
around the fortunes of the company to make it attractive to buyers under the
privatisation programme of government.
The House had, during its recent public
hearing, queried the engagement of Pentascope for the Management of NITEL,
saying that the choice of the Dutch firm was not the best option for turning
around the fortunes of the company to prepare it for privatization. The Staff
of the telecom company have also become apprehensive due to the fact that
NITEL, under Pentascope, had had to borrow from some banks to be able to pay
their salaries.
Besides its unimpressive performance, the
contentions negative debate on the management contract with Pentascope
International is said to have affected the future fortunes of not only NITEL,
but its subsidiary, the Nigerian Mobile Telecommunications Limited (M-Tel) as
well.
The new chairman of the Board of Directors
of M-Tel,Hajiya Aliyu, who dropped this hint in Abuja recently, lamented that
the controversy over Pentascope was undermining the confidence of investors and
leaders alike. This situation, she warned, might affect the sales values of
both NITEL and M-TEL, which have been slated for sale under the Federal
Government privatization exercise.
Hajiya Aliyu, who was briefing members of
the Senate Committee on Communications who visited the Corporate Headquarters
of M-TEL as part of their over sight functions, acknowledged that there were
issues to be redressed in the Management Contract Agreement with Pentascope,
but called for a speedy resolution of such issues “so that
government’s stated objectives for and returns on investments will be
realized.”
A statement in Abuja by Mr. Ekundayo, said
that the Pentascope management would soon make a replacement to Mr. Graham
Moss, who is returning to his home country, the United Kingdom.
|
