A total of 75 companies are bidding for 12 federal roads to be concession under the first phase of the Highway Development Management Initiative (HDMI).
Mrs Abimbola Asein, Head, Public Private Partnership (PPP) Unit of the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing, disclosed this at the opening of Request For Qualification (RFQ) bid on Tuesday, June 1, 2021 in Abuja.
The HDMI was created by Federal Government to develop and manage the federal road network through sustainable Private-Sector investment.
The 12 roads to be concession under the first phase of the HDMI are: Benin-Asaba, Abuja-Lokoja; Kaduna-Kano; Onitsha-Owerri-Aba; Sagamu-Benin; Abuja-Keffi-Akwanga; Lokoja-Benin; Enugu-Port Harcourt; Ilorin-Jebba; Lagos-Ota-Abeokuta; Lagos-Badagry; and Kano-Shuari-Potiskum-Damaturu.
The initiative is aimed at creating alternative sources of financing road development and management in the country while unlocking the massive economic potential of the project routes with attendant job creation.
Asein said that the opening of the portal for the submission of application for the bid would ensure that credible concessionaires were selected for the development and management of the federal roads through sustainable private sector investment.
“It is a two stage procurement process, we have the RFQ; that is this phase now that we are opening the bid for.
“And then we have the Request For Procurement (RFP); the people that have been pre-qualified will now be open to bid for the 12 road corridors that have been identified.
“Seventy-five companies have been successful for pre-qualified so we are going to go through the documents that were submitted by those people.
“Then if they are successful, they go on to the next stage which is RFP stage,” Asein said.
She added that successful RFQ bidders would be contacted after which Bidders Conference would be held preparatory to the RFP.
The head of PPP noted that government came up with the HDMI to free up physical burden on government for competing priorities.
“So a lot is being done on the federal highways as we speak, so we need more to be done and in that we are inviting the private sector to participate in delivering good roads to Nigerians,” she said.
Mr Babangida Husseini, Permanent Secretary in the ministry, in his address, said federal government was committed to a transparent, fair and competitive bidding process throughout the HDMI Project Life Circle.
He was optimistic that everyone who indicated interest at the RFQ stage would meet the basic pre-qualification criteria and were pre-qualified for the RFP stage.
“The nation is looking forward to a robust procurement process that will usher in the much needed concessionaires that will develop and manage these routes, while recouping their investment through till and non till revenue sources,” the perm sec said.
The Minister of Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola, received the Certificate of Compliance for the Outline Business Case for the HDMI in December 2020.
This was followed by the official launching of the E-portal (https://hdmi.worksandhousing.gov.ng) on March 29, 2021.
Applications were received from interested prospective concessionaires in response to the Request for Qualification (RfQ).
In attendance at the occasion were representatives of Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC), Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC), Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE), NGO Network, among others.
By Perpetua Onuegbu
