NIGERIA’S state-run telecommunications company NITEL will be sold off by the end of 2001, says President Olusegun Obasanjo’s chief economic adviser Phillip Asiodu. Asiodu said privatisation was ”still going ahead” and ”would be completed by the end of 2001.” The break-up and privatisation of the state-run electricity company NEPA would take longer but the government was still aiming for completion by 2003, he said. He confirmed the government’s plans to licence four, possibly foreign, firms to operate digital mobile phones in the country. The winners of the licences will be announced in early December. – Reuters