Officials say that Nigeria has revoked the bid of a consortium that offered a total of $2.5 million for a majority stake in the failed state-run telephone company.
Chukwuma Nwokoh, a spokesman for Nigeria’s Bureau of Public Enterprises, told The Associated Press on Friday that the New Generation Telecommunications Consortium had failed to pay a down payment for Nigerian Telecommunications Ltd., known locally as Nitel.
The consortium was supposed to pay $750 million of the total sum by Nov. 5, but the deadline was extended by months.
He said the reserve bidder offered just over a third of the amount.
Nitel, in principle, provides landline telephone service in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation with 150 million residents. However, the state company’s telephones now rarely work.