Nigerian Telecommunications (NITEL)

Established:
Director General:	Engineer Abubakar Nahuce
Headquarters Headquarters Headquarters denotes the location where most, if not all, of the important functions of an organization are coordinated. In the United States, the corporate headquarters represents the entity at the center or the top of a corporation taking full responsibility managing all business activities... :	Abuja Abuja Abuja is the capital city of Nigeria. It is located in the centre of Nigeria, within the Federal Capital Territory . Abuja is a planned city, and was built mainly in the 1980s. It officially became Nigeria's capital on 12 December 1991, replacing Lagos... , Nigeria Nigeria Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...

Nigerian Telecommunications Limited, or NITEL, is the principal telecommunications company in Nigeria

Nigeria

Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...

, and was owned by the government of Nigeria until it was sold to Mtel

Mtel

Mtel may refer to:*Massachusetts Tests for Educator Licensure*Mobiltel, a leading Bulgarian mobile telecom.*M:tel Crna Gora , a telecommunications company in Montenegro*Mtel , the mobile telephony arm of NITEL, Nigeria's principal telecom....

 by the Bureau of Public Enterprises

Bureau of Public Enterprises

The Bureau Of Public Enterprises serves as the secretariat of the National Council on Privatisation and is charged with the overall responsibility of implementing the council's policies on privatization and commercialization...

 (BPE). The mobile telecommunications

Mobile phone

A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...

 arm of Nitel,
Nitel is responsible for all wired telecommunications in Nigeria.

In February 2008 a report by BBC News

BBC News

BBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online...

 says that the Nigerian government assumes the transnational corporation did not improve performance of NITEL and therefore stopped privatization in favour of Transcorp.
Nigerians are frustrated that Nitel has failed to deliver impeccable services that can compare with other networks of the globe. They are not too optimistic that the present Nigerian Government can do this despite the president's promise of improved services by 2009. Looking from 1958 to the arrival of Global Satellite system communication (GSM) in Nigeria; NITEL was able to provide 450,000 susbscriber lines for a population of 120 million.