Fed Govt Receives 75 Bids For Road Concession
A total of 75 firms have submitted bids to serve as concessionaires for 12 federal roads that are mapped out for concession by the Federal Government.
Bid documents submitted by the companies as well as the names of the firms were officially announced on Tuesday at the headquarters of the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing in Abuja.
Some of the firms that submitted bids include China Road and Bridge Corporation Nigeria Limited, Dafac Capitals Limited, Dantata & Sawoe Construction Company (Nigeria) Limited, Diamond Straples Limited, and EK Holdings Limited.
The ministry said the bids were for value-added concession for 12 federal roads under the Highway Development and Management Initiative.
The HDMI was created by the works ministry to develop and manage the country’s federal road network through private sector investment, maximising the use of assets along the right of way.
The bid opening event was witnessed by the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission, some non-government organisations and other interested partners and stakeholders.
The 12 roads that are up for concession under the first phase of the HDMI include Benin-Asaba, Abuja-Lokoja, Kaduna-Kano, Onitsha-Owerri-Aba, Shagamu-Benin, and Abuja-Keffi-Akwanga federal highways.
Others are Lokoja-Benin, Enugu-Port Harcourt, Ilorin-Jebba, Lagos-Ota-Abeokuta, Lagos-Badagry, and Kano-Shuari-PortisKum-Damaturu roads.
The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, had in December 2020 received the Certificate of Compliance for the Outline Business Case for the HDMI, followed by the official inauguration of the e-portal by the minister on March 29, 2021.
Speaking on the sidelines of the bid opening event, the Head, Public Private Partnership, FMWH, Abimbola Asein, said applications were received from interested prospective concessionaires in response to the request for qualification.
She said, “The evaluation process is about to start and at the end of the process, we will communicate to those who have been pre-qualified. It is going to be free, fair and transparent.
“We will go through the documents submitted by the 75 firms and if they are pre-qualified they will go on to the next stage.”
The ministry said the initiative aimed at creating alternative source of financing for road development and management across the country, while unlocking the economic potential of the project routes with attendant job creation.
The FMWH said it was expecting over N1tn from the private sector for the development and maintenance of the 12 highways selected for concession under the HDMI.
The 12 highways combined represent about 1,963km and less than 5.6 per cent of Nigeria’s 35,000km federal highway network.
Officials of the works ministry said the concession of the roads would signify the return of toll gates as concessionaires would have to recoup their investments.
