700 Companies Push For N12bn Railway Projects – NRC

The Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) has said that about 700 companies applied for its N12bn capital projects procurement.

Speaking during the exercise in Lagos, the Director of procurement, NRC, Mr Benjamin Iloanusi, said that the bidding process was purely for capital projects.

“We have over 700 companies that submitted their documents. That is the number of companies that submitted their bids. Our budget is actually in the public knowledge and it’s about N12billion, which is purely for capital projects.”

Iloanusi said that the agency trained its staff to ensure the smooth running of the process.

“We normally have a day before training for people that participate and they are often clear on what they need to do. The training was for the desk officers handling the documents. At least we started on time and it’s going on well because the processes are being followed. Over the years, we have managed to build guidelines and procedures, which is why you see the process going on smoothly.

“The process is going on well. No company has been disqualified yet until we go through their documents. If we find grounds to disqualify any, then we will do that.”

Iloanusi further said that the process was not for the evaluation of validation but to see the documents submitted by the bidders.

“As I said before, we are not evaluating, we are not validating, we are merely looking at the documents they submitted in accordance with the eligibility criteria in the advert. So all that they are doing here is checking that the documents are complete. We can disqualify if the documents are not there.

“The flaws we saw last year gave room for the guidelines this year. If we see any flaws this year, we will work on them in the coming year. So at the end of this year, we will look at lessons learnt and work on the bottlenecks.”

Earlier, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of NRC, Fredrick Okhiria, had said that a lot of bidders wanted to come through the back door.