Lagos — Chief Executive Officer of Vodacom, Mr. Alan Knott-Craig, has expressed regrets over pulling out of an opportunity that would have given Vodacom a piece of Nigeria, Africa's largest telecoms sector.

Knott-Criag, who is retiring as CEO of Vodacom, jointly owned by Telkom of South Africa and United Kingdom's Vodafone, after 15 years of service, has expressed disappointment over missing an opportunity it had to invest in Vmobile (now Celtel) in 2005.

Vodacom has since lost its leadership of Africa's mobile telephone market to another South African giant, MTN, mainly because MTN's strength in the Nigerian market.

Knott-Craig infamously said in 2001 when GSM licences were being auctioned in Nigeria that he would not bid because he did not like doing business with those who are "smarter than we are" - a veiled reference to the stereotype view of Nigerians as scammers.

Knott-Craig told The Times of South Africa that losing the investment opportunity in Nigeria "was a real disappointment for us as a management team. We had worked so hard and were ready to rock 'n roll".

Shedding more light on the reason why Vodacom never took the offer of investing in the country then, he admitted that his worst moment as CEO was when "Vodacom pulled out of its planned foray into Nigeria in 2004, on the orders of shareholders".

That error in judgment opened up an opportunity finally grabbed by MTC of Kuwait, owners of the Celtel brand name, who came in and acquired 65 per cent controlling shares in Vmobile at the cost of US$ 1.01 billion, thus adding over 5 million subscribers to its 22 operations in one fell swoop.

In the almost two years since the acquisition, Celtel has doubled its subscriber base and the Nigerian operation is one of the most successful of the MTC subsidiaries.

The acquisition would have significantly enlarged the subscriber base of Vodacom, which currently has 34 million subscribers.

Nigeria is currently the largest telecoms market in Africa, having overtaken South Africa this year.

At the time Vodacom pulled out, stakeholders who were following the drama of the pull out had predicted that the loss was one the Vodacom team would regret.

Vodacom is still looking for an opportunity to come into the Nigerian market and has been named as one of the companies interested in acquiring the mobile arm of the Nigerian Telecommunications Limited, Mtel.

After it pulled out of the Vmobile deal after pledging to inject over $200 million in the network in what stakeholders called an untidy and mysterious manner, it had tried several times to come back into the Nigerian terrain.

Vodacom first came into the Nigerian terrain through former Econet Wireless Nigeria (EWN) - the operators of Vmobile. However, after less than six months of operating in Nigeria as Vodacom, it pulled out after allegations of bribery, good corporate governance, trust and inconsistencies which put the Nigerian government in bad light.

The MTN Group is ahead of Vodacom today and has over 62 million subscribers, double that of Vodacom which has 34 million subscribers. Vodacom operates in five countries, Mozambique, Lesotho, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo, while MTN has presence in 21 countries.

Knott-Craig will remain CEO until the end of September, and adviser till the of March 2009.

For the past 15 years, he has held sway and has steered Vodacom to become a R48-billion revenue company.