Business
NATCOM Consortium Emerges Preferred Bidder For NITEL, MTEL
Acting Branch Controller, CBN, Mr Emmanuel Etuk (left) who represented Mr Ndubisi Jude Ekwebelen, Port Harcourt Branch Controller, chatting with Corproate Communciation Manager, Mr Obinali Okoli (right) during a workshop on Financial Inclusion, CBN in Port Harcourt recently. Photo: Chris Monyanaga
NATCOM Consortium has emerged the preferred bidder for the acquisition of Nigerian Telecommunications Plc (NITEL) and Nigerian Mobile Telecommunication (MTEL).
The reserved bid price was 252.25 million dollars.
The Chairman, Technical Committee of the National Council on Privatisation (NCP), Mr Atedo Peterside, disclosed this in Abuja on Wednesday during public opening of financial bid for acquisition of the two companies.
Peterside said NCP approved privatisation of the two companies in February 2012 through guided liquidation after a review of previous failed attempts.
He said expressions of interest were received from 17 organisations and consortiums by June 30 deadline, adding that only two of them met criteria for pre-qualification.
According to Peterside, the two successful bidders, NATCOM Consortium and NETTAG Consortium met the minimum pass mark of 75 per cent and were pre-qualified and issued Request for Proposal (RFP).
He said NETTAG Consortium was disqualified for failure to enclose a bid bond as stated in the RFP.
“Section 10.3.1 of the RFP requires that each bidder shall furnish, as part of its proposal, a bid bond in the form of a Bank Guarantee or a Letter of Credit in the sum of 10 million dollars.
“Section 10.3.2 of the RFP further specifies that any technical proposal not accompanied by the bid bond will be disqualified.
“Therefore following the disqualification of NETTAG Consortium as a result of its failure to submit a bid together with its technical proposal, only the financial bid of NATCOM Consortium qualified for opening today,” he said.
He said NATCOM scored an average of 92 per cent in its technical proposal, which was above the minimum mark of 75 per cent.
“As stipulated in the RFP, payment of 30 per cent of bid price is to be made within 15 days of notification and the balance will be paid within 90 days,” he said.
The Director General, Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE), Mr Benjamin Dikki, said efforts to privatise NITEL and MTEL had been unsuccessful even though there was progress in the telecommunication sector.
He said the bureau had numerous challenges which included outstanding unpaid terminal benefits of ex-staff of NITEL and MTEL and arrears of salaries of trained staff, among others.
He also said that there was the challenge of huge accumulated unpaid licence and other fees due to Nigerian Communication Commission.
The Minister of Communication Technology, Mrs Omobola Johnson, said liberalisation of the sector in the last 13 years had attracted new investment of over 32 billion dollars from private sector.
Johnson said the investment had resulted in an increase in the number of subscribers from 750,000 to over 130 million, and that of teledensity from less than 30 per cent to 96.08 per cent.
She said the privatisation of NITEL and MTEL was the final step in the reform of the telecommunications sector.
According to Johnson, government will continue to review and fine tune policies to provide enabling environment for growth and development of private sector-driven telecommunications industry.
Cornerstone of Financial Services
A survey of more than 1 000 global finance leaders undertaken by digital payment network Ripple shows that 72% of respondents believe they need to offer a digital asset solution to remain competitive.
According to Ripple, leaders from the banking, fintech, corporate and asset management sector have made it clear that the “digital asset revolution is happening now”.
“Digital assets are quickly becoming a cornerstone of financial services, underpinned by progressive regulation, growing interest from Tier-1 banks, a steady consumer shift from banks to fintech providers, and booming stablecoin adoption,” Ripple says.
The survey was conducted in early 2026 and the findings released in March.
Stablecoin Boon or Bane?
Ripple has experienced significant success in the stablecoin sector since launching its Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin in 2024.
With a market cap of $1.56 billion, it is considered a major regulated player in the market.
No doubt the platform was pleased to learn through its own survey that financial leaders were most bullish about stablecoins.
Roughly three-quarters of respondents believed they could boost cash-flow efficiency and unlock trapped working capital.
Ripple noted that finance leaders were thinking about stablecoins as more than “just a new way to execute payments”; instead, they viewed them as effective tools for treasury management.
In March 2026, Ripple began testing a new trade finance model built around RLUSD in a bid to increase the speed of cross-border payments.
The pilot initiative, developed alongside supply chain finance company Unloq [https://unloq.com], is running on the XRP Ledger inside a testing framework developed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
The Asian city-state is one of the platform’s biggest growth markets.
The idea behind the project is to see whether stablecoin-based settlement can streamline trade finance, too often hampered by reliance on intermediaries and slow reconciliation.
The only potential drawback is that if the initiative takes off, the Ripple to USD price could be negatively affected.
Ripple has always championed its native XRP token as a bridge asset, the “middleman” in the process of a financial institution turning dollars in the US into pounds in the UK, for example.
Ripple converts dollars into XRP and then back into pounds.
If RLUSD can do exactly the same thing, questions will be asked about XRP’s relevance.
That is a bridge Ripple will have to cross if it gets to that point.
Tokenisation Partners
Another interesting finding from Ripple’s survey is that most banks and asset managers are seeking tokenisation partners to help execute their strategies.
Some 89% of respondents said digital asset storage and custody were top priority. “Token servicing/lifecycle management also ranks highly for banks at 82%, while asset managers place greater emphasis on primary distribution at 80%,” Ripple found.
The survey also revealed that just more than half of fintechs and financial institutions want an infrastructure provider that can offer a “one-stop-shop solution”. This rose to 71% among corporate financial leaders.
Ripple attributes this to institutions and firms wanting uncomplicated, cohesive systems.
Infrastructure Rules
In its final analysis, Ripple says companies across the board are looking for partners and solutions that are “secure, compliant, battle-tested and that enable growth and execution”.
“The message is clear: infrastructure decisions made today will shape competitive positioning tomorrow.”
No surprise that this is precisely where Ripple is placing much of its focus.
