The National Council on Privatisation (NCP) has been urged not to cancel the NITEL sale to the preferred bidder, New Generation Telecommunication Limited.

The Conference of Nigeria Political Parties (CNPP) said this at a press briefing yesterday in Abuja through its National Publicity Secretary Osita Okechukwu, ahead of today's meeting of the NCP over the moribund national telecommunication company.

New Generation Telecommunication Limited offered to pay $2.5 billion for the NITEL when the bidding opened on February 16.

Two days after the deal, one of the partners in the Consortium, Unicom China said it was not party to the deal. It later said a unit in Europe was the partner.

As controversy continues to trail the deal, the Director General of the Bureau for Public Procurement (BPE) Dr. Christopher Anyanwu got a letter of suspension.

CNPP said if the deal is cancelled it will expose the rots in the NITEL privatisation exercise since 2001.

CNPP said: "Information reaching CNPP is that the new cabal around the Acting President is persuading the Acting President as the Chairman of NCP to cancel the bid with utter disregard that Unicom China has stated clearly that Unicom Europe is in contact with New Generations Telecommunications' bid, thus reversing their earlier position.

"CNPP wishes to warn that it will be too early in the day for the Acting President to allow predators and scavengers who are alleged to have collected huge sums in dollars to deceive him into cancelling the NITEL bid." It was said that the liabilities trailing the NITEL transaction is hovering between $1.5 to $1.8 billion.

CNPP alleged that the $510 billion earlier paid by Transcorp on NITEL was not paid into the federation account, saying government was forced to pay N70 billion to the banks that borrowed Transcorp the money.

"Consequently, CNPP will open up the Pandora's Box if the NITEL bid is cancelled for it is our considered view that there is no cogent and verifiable reason to do so", Osita said.