Teddy Oscar, Abuja
The Federal Government recorded another milestone in the nation’s privatisation process of its power industry as 66 companies declare their interests to bid for the generation plants.
The event, the ‘Sale of Shares in 10 gas-fired Generation Companies Developed under the National Integrated Power Project (NIPP) Public opening Proposals’, was a giant step towards government’s actualisation of its target of ensuring that the gas-fired generation plants are sold and inaugurated by 2014 as promised by President Goodluck Jonathan.
During the formal opening of the bid documents for the privatisation of the plants in Abuja on Monday, James Olotu, managing director of the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) Limited, hinted that the 66 companies, which bided, were opened.
Pointing out that there was no immediate disqualification, Olotu, who noted that the reason for immediate disqualification would only be that one of the important items is not there, which may disqualify a bidding company.
While assuring that most of them met the primary objectives, he revealed that the valuation of the bids should be completed in two weeks’ time.
“It gladdens our hearts that, again, we have completed a very significant milestone in the entire transaction. In the next two weeks, our members of the evaluation committees would be assembled, starting from today, in their evaluation rooms, and they would be evaluating these bids on the parameters that have been agreed and approved.
“Hopefully, by 23rd of this month or thereabout, they should have completed it and the approval processes would kick-start. I want to assure you that everything is being done to ensure that the entire process is transparent, and that the integrity of the process would not only be Nigerianised, but internationalised to the acceptance of all.
“The results, when they are ready, would also be publicly announced on a date when this would be required. This should be taken as a game, which produces a winner and a loser. Those of you, who may lose out when the results are out could be winners during the financial process,” he added.
Olotu, who hinted that additional time would be granted to the evaluation team, if it requires more time to the minimum two-week period already given to it, highlighted the areas the evaluation team would be looking at.
“First is the competence of these companies to be able to operate and manage successfully the power plants of the capacity that they are applying for. Of course, we don’t want to give the power plants to someone, who doesn’t have that competence. Otherwise, they would just come in and purchase the plant, sell it, and run away from Nigeria, and Nigeria would be short-changed.
“The second point is to ensure that they have the financial capability to actually invest. Some people would claim that they have money, but when the time comes for them to pay, they would say that they don’t have the money. So, we want to make sure that from the beginning that they have the financial strength to be able to pay for the plant of their choice.
“Lastly is to ensure that the consortium, you know sometimes, one company may not be the only person in the team… it may have two, three, four, five consortium members. We want to make sure that the consortium is actually a good consortium member. We don’t want the one that would fall apart halfway into the process. We want to make sure that when you privatise, it must be something better than what it was before., otherwise it doesn’t make any sense to do so,” he said.
Some of the generation companies that made it to this stage include the Benin Generation Company with four companies; Calabar Generation Company with six companies; Oloronsog Genration Company with five companies; Gberian Generation Company with eight companies; and Omotoso Generation Company with 13 companies.
During the formal inauguration of the Phase 2 Geregu 434 megawatts power plants in Kogi State, Jonathan, who had assured that all the 10 plants would be sold to private investors, said that by 2014, all the 10 plants would have been inaugurated and sold to private investors.
Jonathan said that the Federal Government would continue to inaugurate more power plants, adding that the operational ones had so far added about 5,000 megawatts to the national grid.
He said that the construction of the power plants was funded from the Excess Crude Oil Account, jointly owned by the three-tiers of governments.
Jonathan said that more NIPPs would be completed and inaugurated, as part of efforts to overhaul the power sector and boost electricity generation in the country.
