Following the assurance made by Governor Umar Bago to ensure the State owned University starts its Medicine Department in ernest, no fewer than eleven companies have bidded as contractors to handle the conversion of the Shiroro Hotel into the Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University Teaching Hospital.
It should be recalled that the call for bids was opened 19th of June but 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.
GoldenNews Online reports 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.
In his remarks, Permanent Secretary of the state Ministry of Health, Dr. Mohammed Gama on Friday assured that the exercise will be transparent.
According to him “the work ahead of us is a massive project. We said that we want a competitive bidding process and based we can not afford to act out side the bidding processes.
“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.”
Speaking also, Permanent Secretary of the Niger State Public Procurement Board, Shehu Jibril explained that the state government has a target to shortlist no fewer than six firms after the pre-qualification exercise.
He added that, the state government had adopted a two-stage bidding process to ascertain the competence and qualification of the companies bidding for the contracts.
According to Jibrin “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 on behalf of other bidders, Mr. Ocholi Onekufi of the Wamebson Solutions limited commended the Ministry for the transparency and smooth process.
Amongst companies that bidded are Awake limited, Bijo surgical and Science, P. Gama original limited, Fulus Group, Haitrix Innovatory services, Wamebson solutions limited, Sanjil Excellent limited, CG Biostadt, Thinklab Energy, BS Multi project limited and Thinklab Development company.
