The Bureau of Public Enterprises has received financial and technical bids from five firms who are interested in purchasing the 51 percent stakes in Afam Power Plc and Yola Electricity Distribution Company.
According to the Head of Public Communications at the Bureau of Public Enterprises, Amina Othman, the bids were received from the prospective core-investors last week Friday, March 15, 2019, which was also the deadline for submission of bids.
One of the bidders pulled out: However, one of the bidding companies, Sandstream Nigeria, who offered to buy a stake in Yola Electricity Distribution Company, withdrew its bid after the company the company failed to include a bank guarantee in its proposal.
“A total of five bids were received by the BPE on Friday, March 15, 2019 – being the deadline for the submission of technical and financial proposals for the acquisition of the Yola Electricity Distribution Company and Afam Electricity Generation Company (Afam Power Plc & Afam Three Fast Power Limited) by prospective core-investors.
“Two firms – Quest Electricity Nigeria Limited and Sandstream Nigeria – submitted proposals to acquire the Yola Disco while DiamondStripes Consortium, Unicorn Power Generation Consortium and Transcorp Power, sought to acquire the Afam Genco.
“Sandstream submission was, however, found to be non-responsive as it failed to include a bank guarantee in line with the requirements in the Requests for Proposal.
“Accordingly, the representative of the firm took the bid back.”
The genesis of the bidding process
Approval for a fresh transaction to privatise the two power companies was given by the National Council on Privatisation in 2017. BPE published an expression of interest for the two companies in national newspapers on August 16, 2018.
A total of 19 firms had indicated interest to acquire the Afam Power Company and the Yola Distribution Company at the close of the submission of bids for the Expression of Interest at 1 pm on Tuesday, September 26, 2018. After evaluation of the EOIs, 11 firms qualified for the next stage but only the five were successful.
Evaluation Committee to decide the final bidders
The Director-General of BPE, Alex Okoh promised the highest level of integrity would be put into the evaluation of bids. He added that Evaluation Committee would meet immediately to discuss and finalise the scoring criteria before commencing the evaluation process which was expected to end on Thursday.
According to the report by Punch, the successful bidders will be responsible for operating the generation and distribution companies, making the necessary investments to improve the generation and distribution networks and customer service in line with the objectives of the Federal Government of Nigeria set out in the National Electric Power Policy, the BPE spokesperson added.
