Turning around its Nigerian business is Telkom's number one priority, the telecoms giant said on Tuesday.

"We view the situation at Multi-Links in Nigeria in a serious light," Telkom's CEO Reuben September told a results presentation in Sandton, Johannesburg.

On Monday, the group released its results for the 2009 financial year which showed a 45.9 percent fall in headline earnings per share.

Profit decreased by 47.7 percent to R4.170-million in the year ended 31 March 2009.

The results also showed that Telkom's Nigerian operations had made a loss of R1.76-billion.

"Nigeria is not immune to the global meltdown – it's an oil based economy," September said.

"We saw the weakening of the naira against the dollar. We ended up with a forex loss of R902-million."

Turnaround plans included the budgeting of capital expenditure of US$100-million for the 2009/10 financial year with the primary objective of adding an additional 1000km of fibre.

Telkom also planned to have a national fibre network in place that would connect all major cities with metro fibre rings in Nigeria's top five cities, September said.

"We expect Multi-Links to be cash flow positive by 2011/12," he added.

Turning around Multi-Link's performance was vital to Telkom "given the extent of the group's investment and the enormous opportunity the Nigerian market provides", September said.

Telkom acquired 75 percent of Multi-Links in 2007 and in 2009, it purchased the remaining 25 percent.

Sapa

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