Again another quickly cobbled investment vehicle, NATCOM, has finally taken over the carcass of the defunct NITEL/MTel. And now there is this new controversy because NATCOM is reported to have sacked 400 workers. The "workers" are up in arms.
Which workers? Could NATCOM have sacked anybody? How do you sack somebody who has never worked or had to come to work for 10years or so? All this while his employer went bankrupt or insolvent, lost all his assets, nay achieved a ruinous negative net worth due to the "superior" enterprise of these same workers, assuming that they were ever worthy of that appellation. This scenario has already played out at NEPA/PHCN to the detriment of our commonwealth and as I had warned earlier will ultimately haunt us again as we wind up the NNPC as we must.
I hereby plead with the news media not to put words in the mouth of the latest rescuers of the defunct NITEL/MTel. NATCOM does not have any employees so to speak and hence cannot lay off any staff. If any group wants to lay another booby trap for the incoming Buhari administration, by mentioning NITEL, a company that many 15year-olds have never heard about, they had better stopped it forthwith.
If Presidents Obasanjo, Yar'Adua, Jonathan and four different Houses of Representatives & Senate could not resolve the NITEL debacle in 16 years, I wonder what anyone expects Buhari to do especially now that the nation has resolutely moved on in all matters telecoms.
A store-keeper does not set his store ablaze, burning what items he did not steal, and then turn around to expect commendation, salaries and bonuses from the now dispossessed owner. Sadly this keeps repeating itself in Nigeria.
My fellow countrymen will remember the initial phase of the contributory pension scheme for public sector employees about 10years ago. I cannot immediately recall the name of the character who strangely proposed merging the existing private sector contributions with the non-existent public sector contributions so as to facilitate the payment of pensions and gratuities to civil servants! Talk of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Of course the idea was stillborn.
The amazing thing was the civil service chapters of the NLC never saw the problem looming. They probably never even cared but slept on their rights and collaborated with their senior colleagues who made away with funds rightfully belonging to their members.
Any NITEL "worker" who after 10years of inactivity still does not realise that the party was long over must be living in a fool's Paradise. He probably deserves our pity.
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