Nigeria’s Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) has announced that it will reconsider the reserve bid for the state-owned operator NITEL after the winning bidder was unable to pay the 30 percent deposit after the previous attempt to sell the company. According to Cellular News, financial bids for NITEL – and its mobile arm, M-Tel – were held last February, and Omen International Consortium emerged the reserved bidder with an offer price of US$956 million. The winning bid came from the UK-based New Generation Consortium which offered US$2.5 billion, but then missed several deadlines to pay the deposit. The government is selling a 75 percent stake in the firm.