Nigeria has set a 60-day deadline to privatise struggling national operator Nitel, the country’s vice-president said this week, reports Reuters. The renewed push for privatisation follows months of failed attempts to sell off a 75 percent stake in the company, which includes a fixed-line operation and a mobile unit, Mtel. “Mr President has directed that the privatisation of Nitel/Mtel must be concluded in the next 60 days,” Nigerian Vice President Goodluck Jonathan said during the inauguration of a new technical board for the state-owned firm. “The major challenge of this board is to resuscitate Nitel/Mtel and prepare the two companies for privatisation.”

The saga over ownership of the firm has meant that subscriber growth at the operator has been in freefall in recent years. According to a recent edition of Wireless Intelligence’s Snapshot, mobile connections at Mtel have dropped from a high of around 1 million five years ago to just 256,000 by 2Q09. The operator has suffered from industrial action, equipment loss and vandalism, a chronic lack of investment and allegations of corruption. According to Reuters, local conglomerate Transcorp had earlier bought a majority stake in the operator but the government took back control in June, citing a lack of investment and unpaid debts in the three years that Transcorp had ran the firm. Nigeria came close to selling Nitel in late 2005 to Egypt’s Orascom Telecom, but the government rejected the US$257 million offer as too low.