By Demi Aderibigbe
No fewer than 534 companies bided for capital projects with the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) for the 2024 financial year.
The NRC Managing Director, Fidet Okhiria, who disclosed this during the bid opening ceremony which held at the headquarters, Lagos, said the bidding is usually carried out yearly in line with the Procurement Act.
Okhiria who was represented by the Director Administration and Human Resources, Dr Mrs Monsurat Omotoso said in line with the Act, an advert requesting for bidding had earlier been published and the deadline which was April 18, 2024, had to be extended due to the holiday breaks observed in the country.
He said the bid opening is being done in the open to assure everyone of the transparency of the process adding that all firms who succeeded at the pre-qualified at the opening session would have their names published.
Okhiria added that representatives of the Federal Ministry of Transportation, officials of the Institute of Procurement as well as members of the civil society organisations, the Civil Liberties Organisation, and the anti- corruption and transparency unit based in the headquarters, who are on ground to observe and assess the transparency of the exercise.
Earlier, the NRC’s Director of Procurement, Mr Ben Iloanusi, said bidders were invited on three broad categories namely, works, goods and services.
According to him, all that all firms who bided for any of the categories needed to do at this stage is to submit all documents as indicated in the advertisement and any documents not attached are expected to be supplied by the officials of the companies or risk being disqualified.
He said: “this process is merely authenticating and validating all documents submitted y the various biders and at the end of the day, we are going to go through these documents and ensure that they meet the requirements. This would take two weeks and we would come out via another publication the list if pre-qualified biders.”
Iloanusi said the biders are to be qualified to provide the various projects ahead of the corporation in the financial year in line with its budgetary provision for the fiscal year.
He said the contractors would be offering among other services renovations, repairs of locomotives, purchase of rolling stocks such as coaches and wagons and procurement of locomotives spare parts.
“We have over 500 projects across the country and any contractors who qualified to provide service along the three basic categories,” Iloanusi said.
He said the numbers of biders this year is a little lower than what used to be recorded in previous years, adding that while just 534 bided this year, over 1000 biders was received last year.
This year’s biding exercise The Nation reports is the last exercise to be conducted by the Fidet Okhiria leadership of the NRC as he would be leaving office later in the year.