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Barkindo said that the resumption of gas supply to the countries was because domestic gas supply had improved, hinting also that supply to Ghana was initially stopped to satisfy local demand.

The NNPC GMD, who was speaking to journalists on the sidelines of a meeting organised by the corporation titled, "Stakeholders' forum on gas to power: Achieving alignment for delivering gas to power in Nigeria," said, "Today, we have started supplying the West African Gas Pipeline, which we had to shut down in order to divert the gas for domestic utilisation."

He added that the reason for the resumption of supply was "Because power generation has started to go up."

The West African Gas Pipeline Company, the firm delivering Nigeria's gas to Ghana, had in a statement issued in November 2009, said, "WAPco, last April delivered its first natural gas supply to VRA's Takoradi Thermal Plant at Aboadze near Takoradi, under an interim gas supply arrangement.

"This initial supply enabled VRA to commission one of its 100 megawatts' turbines and generate power in Ghana from natural gas.

"Since May 2009, however, WAPCo has not received gas from N-Gas Limited for further delivery to VRA due to vandalism of gas supply pipelines in the Niger Delta region, several kilometres upstream of the WAGP connection to the Nigerian Gas Company's Escravos-Lagos Pipeline system."

Corroborating Barkindo's statement on increased power generation , the Executive Director, Operations, Power Holding Company of Nigeria, Mr. John Ayodele, who was also speaking on the sidelines of the conference in Lagos, said power generation was 3,558 megawatts on Monday morning and could climb to 3,700MW by Tuesday morning.

Also, Barkindo, had, in a presentation at the opening ceremony of the event, explained reasons why the oil industry could not achieve the 1.2 billion standard cubic feet of gas- domestic -gas- target agreed between it and government in 2008 and which government provided adequate funds for.in 2008 and 2009 budgets.

According to him, although the industry achieved 885 million standard cubic feet, it fell short of the target beacuse of the security situation in the Niger Delta, which was poor between 2008 and 2009 and operational challenges in the various oil producing companies.

Barkindo said, " The 1.2 billion scfd, domestic gas supply obligation was distributed among Joint Venture companies, including the NNPC and some of the Production Sharing Contracts' operators like Pan Ocean. In each of the companies, they had internal challenges. Now, this meeting that we convened will give us the opportunity to jointly review and address these challenges in order to come out with a joint programme of action, that is realistic, flexible and will enable us, not only to achieve the missed target but also to bring forward the projects which are being funded in the 2010 budget."

He stated that the outcome of the conference would be presented to Acting President Goodluck Jonathan

A consortium involving China Unicom bid $2.5 billion on Tuesday for the former state telecoms monopoly in Nigeria, one of the world's fastest growing markets, the privatization body said.

The National Council on Privatization said New Generation Telecommunications Ltd. had become the preferred bidder for Nitel, which Nigeria has struggled to sell since liberalization in 2001 made it uncompetitive against rivals.

The privatization body said the consortium included China Unicom (Hong Kong) Limited, Minerva Group of Dubai and local company GiCell Wireless Limited. Their precise holdings in the consortium were not immediately available.

China, Africa's biggest trading partner, has invested billions of dollars in the continent in recent years, going far beyond its initial emphasis on mineral extraction.

Nigeria invited expressions of interest in July for a minimum of a 75 percent stake in the Nitel conglomerate or a stake in one or several of its components, including mobile arm MTEL, the South Atlantic Terminal underwater cable (SAT-3) and its domestic fixed line network.

After the bid is approved by the privatization council, the group will have 10 days to pay 30 percent of the purchase price and a further 50 days to pay the rest. The reserve bidder was Omen International Ltd (BVI) with a bid of $956 million.

"We will pay within the stipulated time. We did not make a hypothetical offer," said Abubakar Usman from New Generation.

South Africa's MTN was among the bidders, but only for a stake in the SAT-3 underwater cable.

Nigeria has overtaken South Africa to become the biggest telecoms market in Africa.

But the government has struggled to sell the firm mainly because of the shambolic state of its fixed line infrastructure.

Its fixed lines have fallen to less than 100,000 from five times that number in 2001 and MTEL subscribers have dropped to a few thousand from over 1 million.

Nigeria ended Nitel's monopoly in 2001 and tried to sell it the same year. But preferred bidders failed to pay the $1.3 billion price tag by the deadline, leaving it in state hands.

Local conglomerate Transcorp later bought a majority state in the firm but the government took back control last June, citing a lack of investment and unpaid debts.

Nigeria came close to selling Nitel in late 2005 to Egypt's Orascom Telecom, but the government rejected the $257 million offer as too low.