The call for the submission of bids for the conversion of Shiroro Hotel into the Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University Teaching Hospital has been stalled due to lack of competitive response and low turnout of contractors.
The call for bids which was opened 19th of June only saw two companies turning in their bids as at Monday, 3rd July which should have been the submission deadline causing the state government to postpone the bid submission deadline till further notice.
It will be recalled that the Niger State Governor, Mohammed Umaru Bago had announced during his inauguration that he would convert the Shiroro Hotel which had been nonfunctional for several years into a university teaching hospital to boost the health system in the state.
The Permanent Secretary of the state Ministry of Health, Dr. Mohammed Gana who disclosed this to newsmen in Minna on Monday said that there was no way the state can make the exercise transparent with just two companies competing for the bidding.
“The idea of open competition is to ensure transparency as well as fairness in the bid process. We want both the local and international companies to compete favorably for the project at hand.
“The work ahead of us is a massive project. We said that we want a competitive bidding process and based on this, we have no option but to postpone the entire process because we need more people to apply for the project. These two companies are not satisfactory,” he said.
The Permanent Secretary said that to ensure that every bidder would be treated equally in the bidding process, the ministry had constituted an evaluation committee to handle the process stating that the members of the committee would be fair in the discharge of their duties.
The Permanent Secretary of the Niger State Public Procurement Board, Shehu Jibril explained that the postponement was because the number of firms on ground was not up to the target of the state government as they have made a target to shortlist no fewer than six firms after the pre-qualification exercise.
He said that for all the three bids, the state government had adopted a two-stage bidding process to ascertain the competence and qualification of the companies bidding for the contracts.
“The bid is divided into Lots 1, 2, and 3 which would be for the refurbishment and upgrading of executive structures, the construction of new buildings, infrastructure, and external works, as well as a bid for equipment and installation.”
Speaking to journalists shortly after the program, one of the bidders, Idris Saidu representing Sanjir Excellence Production Limited said that his firm had accepted the government decision saying that the process followed by the way the government wants it would be transparent and competitive.
“In the interest of fairness and transparency, we are okay with the government’s decision to want more submissions,” he said.