Revisit Daily Times sale too

WITH the recent reversal of the sale of NITEL or is it dilution of the shareholding by the Federal Government due to the glaring inability of Transcorp Plc to ensure a quick turn around of the Telecommunications giant, one is tempted to ask the Government to look into the case of the fraudulent sale of Daily Times of Nigeria Plc to a company known to possess no credible credentials to manage such a national monument.

Since the assumption of control of Daily Times, Nigeria's oldest newspaper conglomerate by Folio Communication, owned by one Fidelis Anosike, the fortune of the media house has gone down the drain. The process leading to the privatisation of the company in the first place was shrouded in huge manipulation which characterised the former eight years of Obasanjo administration as Folio had no financial nor managerial capabilities to run such a big national monument.

The BPE had to bend the rules by equally encouraging Folio to pledge the assets of DTN as collateral for loan from the consortium of banks to pay for the company. Besides this, Folio has embarked on massive disposal of all the assets of DTN to offset a portion of the loans and finance the lifestyle of its owners, yet the company is lying prostrate, while huge unpaid staff salaries and other benefits remain unresolved.

In my thinking, this is the right time the government of President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua should step in to correct all the plundering of our commonwealth by the immediate past administration and ensure that justice is done on this issue of the sale of Daily Times. The case of DTN and many other national monuments sold off to the stooges of the past government should be looked into urgently with a view to reversing them too.

The Daily Times represents a major part of Nigerian history that should not be allowed to die. It is time for the government and all those who have been involved in the shaping of the history of the newspaper group to rise up and demand for justice and due process in the privatisation of the company. As it stands today, Folio Communication is incapable of reinventing the history of the company neither does it possess the proverbial magic wand to ensure the continuity or survival of the company, thereby defeating the purpose of its privatisation in the first place.

Already, the newspapers in the stable of the company have gone off the newsstands across the country, while the entire assets of the company, including its present headquarters at Agidingbi Ikeja, Lagos have been compromised one way or the other. The recent revelations at the House of Representatives Committee on Public Petitions by the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation' s (NDIC) director of legal services/company secretary, Prince Alheri Nyako, that it is improper for Folio to sell any of the newspaper outfit's assets for repayment of N500 million, part of the loan it had secured from a consortium of banks, was an eye opener.

All the agencies of government that are party to the sale of the DTN were compromised in the process leading to the privatisation and the subsequent monitoring of its performance thereafter. What Nigerians need now is justice, and Yar'Adua should endeavour to ensure that fast.