Odey welcomes Zain

Minister of Communications, Chief John Odey, has welcomed the recent rebranding of Celtel to Zain.

At a session with officials Zain Nigeria at the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja, led by the chief executive, Mr. Bayo Ligali, the Minister said, the government is at ease with the rebranding of Celtel in Nigeria and the introduction of the Zain brand in line with the leading global mobile operator on the continent of Africa and Middle East.

He also commended Zain for investing heavily in infrastructure development across various communities in the country, stressing that the telco’s massive expansion project has brought relief to many people especially rural dwellers in this part of the world.

In his remark, Ligali explained the reasons for the transformation of Celtel to Zain, saying that the brand identity change was in line with the leading international mobile operator strategy of unifying its brands into one big, strong, easily recognizable and acceptable global brand.

Ligali was also quoted in a press statement made available to Champion Infotel by the Public Relations Manager, Zain Nigeria, Mr. Emmanuel Otokhine as saying that the rebranding would bring a lot of benefits to customers of the company.

“Some of the benefits include more investment and infrastructure development in the country, access to One Network, Zain’s roaming charges-free service in numerous countries in Africa and the Middle East, improvement in service quality, greater synergy in terms of products and services developments and sharing of expertise and experience, among many others,” he said.

In addition, the Chief Executive said that customers of the company are now members of the over 52 million strong Zain family worldwide. He explained that the rebranding has not affected the management structure of the company, emphasizing that the management, board and owners structure under Celtel will remain in place under the Zain brand.

Just as Zain is currently pursuing an aggressive rural expansion and connection programme through the introduction of the most cost effective ultra low cost Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) handsets and rural distribution and entrepreurship programme, as well as the Rural Acquisition Initiative (RAI) that seeks to create wealth and jobs and involve communities in the maintenance, security of base stations and distribution of products.


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