By HALIMAH BALOGUN
The Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC), yesterday unveiled about 900 pre-qualification documents of bidders for the capital projects of the corporation.
Speaking at the event held in NRC Headquarters, Ebute Meta, Lagos, Its Managing Director, Mr Fidet Okhiria said that the corporation was determined to follow the due process to the letter and ensure transparency.
Okhiria who was represented by Mr Frank Ajoku urged those involved in the pre-qualification exercise to ensure that the process was duly followed and be as transparent as it could be, to achieve success.
The NRC Director of Procurement, Mr Benjamin Iloanusi, noted that the step was part of the fulfilment of the due process by the Public Procurement Act.
Iloanusi explained that the initial phase of evaluating document availability is nearing completion noted that once this step concludes, the next phases of validation, authentication, and evaluation will follow. He added that the bidding process, which commenced with a six-week advertisement period is expected to finalize these subsequent stages within three to five weeks.
According to him, regulatory bodies such as the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) will be consulted to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the submissions.
*Once we are done with this, we go into validation and authentication process and then evaluation process. The first step, the advert itself that led to this took about six weeks there about after which we carried out evaluation. Validation and authentication process will take another three to five weeks. “You can imagine, we have over 800 about 900 documents that were submitted so we have to painstakingly evaluate, authenticate and validate all of that and part of the validation too and authentication is going to the relevant regulatory body like the PPP, we will actually go to them to validate, authenticate the document so roughly 3-4 weeks maximum”, he said.
He commended the behaviour and knowledge demonstrated by participants, attributing the smooth running of the process to their understanding of their roles. He also acknowledged the dedication of his team, which has developed standardized procedures over the years to improve the efficiency of the procurement process.