The Director of Procurement, (NRC), Ben Iloanusi, has disclosed that no fewer than 700 firms have submitted documents as the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) opens bid for the 2022 capital projects, with an estimated N12b budget.
Iloanusi added that the corporation had not began evaluation, authentication and validation, as the opening was merely for checking the documents submitted by the companies in accordance with the eligibility criteria put out in the adverts.
He said: “We are merely checking the documents. If the documents are complete, we tick some of these companies, if their documents are not complete, it gives room for automatic disqualification at this point. However, we have not disqualified any company yet, because we just started checking the documents,” Iloanusi said.
The NRC director said that the checked documents would proceed for validation and authentication, adding that NRC would contact the likes of the Nigerian Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF), Industrial Training Fund (ITF) and others to authenticate the documents submitted. Iloanusi explained that for the NRC to improve the bidding process, they had conducted training for the desk officers handling the documents submitted.
He said that the corporation had built a process and procedure document, which the desk officers use as guide and consult in case of doubts.
The Director of Operations, NRC, Niyi Alli, said that transparency is key, adding that NRC would keep improving on the bidding process yearly.
“Today, one of the things we have done better is that we have controlled access to the premises. We have security personnel in attendance and all the necessary support agencies are here to witness the process. We are also getting feedbacks from the people attending and we will continue to take these feedbacks to improve on our processing,” he stated.
