By HUGO ODIOGOR
Dredging firms that feel cheated by the refusal of the Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA, to respect the due process in the evaluation of the Calabar Port dredging contract have shunned the Ministry of Transport’s bid to placate them.

At a meeting in Abuja, the companies were unanimous in their decision that the way out of the quagmire was for the ministry and NPA to adhere to due process.

Present at the talks were the Permanent Secretary of the ministry who presided, representatives of all six companies vying for the project, as well as NPA’s General Manager (Capital Projects), an officials of the BPP and Transport ministry.

The companies have in the past three months been contesting the authority’s resolve to award the contract to its subsidiary, Lagos Channel Management, LCM, in defiance of the Bureau for Public Procurement, BPP, Act.

Their grouse includes that LCM came a distant fourth in the bid tender and had the highest bid among the four pre-qualified companies.  They also claimed that LCM should not even have participated in the process given its relationship with the arbiter. This is more so as the company never disclosed its ties with NPA as required in the bid procedure and extant BPP regulations.

According to them, contrary to the impression given by NPA, LCM had eight conditions attached to its bid. More over, the favoured company, according to them, is not a dredging firm but a channel management company and derives the tools with which it executes government contracts from the NPA.

The meeting was called to resolve the controversy that ensued following NPA’s decision to abandon three firms that offered lower bid prices than LCM.  One of the companies, Jan De Nul, had petitioned BPP accusing NPA of having vested interest in the project.

However, the meeting turned out to be a forum by the Acting Permanent secretary of ministry to pacify the aggrieved contractors so as to secure a “Certificate of No Objection” for LCM from the BPP.

Sources at the talks revealed that rather than address the issues raised by the petitioner, he asked the companies not to protest as more contracts were in the offing.  The BPP official at the meeting reportedly upbraided the NPA and its consultants, AIM Consultants for their failure to conduct a proper commercial evaluation and for not disclosing their interest in LCM.

There has been a groundswell of opposition against the alleged plan of the Federal Ministry of Transport and the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) to manipulate the evaluation process of the bid for the capital dredging of the Calabar Port.

Some of the companies that participated have in the last three months been contesting what they describe as “the deft moves” of the ministry and NPA to award the $200 million (about N30 billion) contract to NPA’s subsidiary, Lagos Channel Management (LCM), against procurement procedures as enshrined in the Public Procurement Act 2007.

Owing to the conflict, the re-dredging of the 86-kilometre Calabar River Channel has run into a stalemate. Almost 15 months after the process was initiated, the preferred bidders are yet to secure a “Certificate of No Objection” from the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), let alone lift a spade of silt on the channel.

All entreaties by the ministry and its agency to pacify the aggrieved firms so as to pave the way for LCM to secure the BPP’s go-ahead have been shunned by the contractors. A fence mending meeting in Abuja last week at the instance of the Permanent Secretary of the ministry was followed by a diversionary advertisement by the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) in several national dailies.

Part of the grouse of the dredging companies is that LCM, by virtue of its relationship with the arbiters, should not have been part of the bid process. Its involvement, to them, is not only unethical but also tantamount to NPA acting as a judge in a competition it is taking active part in.

The situation, they claim, is further compounded by the refusal of LCM to disclose its ties with NPA as required in the bid procedure and extant BPP regulations on one hand as well as the refusal of NPA and the ministry to declare their interest in LCM on the other. Records show that LCM is owned by a consortium of NPA and a Swiss company, Depasa Marine International, which is managed by Israelis. About 60 per cent of the company’s shares belong to NPA and 40 per cent to Depasa.