The Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) has shortlisted five firms out of 24 that bid for the electronic-ticketing solutions for Lagos-Ibadan and Warri-Itakpe Standard Gauge Train services.
The five firms were unveiled yesterday as they went through the next stage of Request for Proposal.
Daily Trust reports that two firms were shortlisted for Lagos-Ibadan while three were shortlisted for the Warri-Itakpe train service.
This was in line with the plan of the federal government to automate and decentralise the ticketing system for the train services which have since been running.
At the formal opening of the bids for the five shortlisted companies, the NRC Director of Procurement, Mr Ben Iloanusi, said after advertising for the e-ticketing project of Lagos-Ibadan and Warri-Itakpe Standard Gauge operations, the corporation shortlisted based on the evaluation of the whole expression of interest.
He said the corporation then selected five of the bidders.
According to him, the NRC had moved to the next stage of issuing Requests For Proposal (RFP) which would analyze the technical solution and the financial strength of the bidders.
The Director, Transport Infrastructure of the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission’s (ICRC), Dr. Emmanuel Onwodi, commended the NRC for its diligence and transparency in the exercise.
He said the commission was running a two-stage process with the idea of coming up with a preferred bidder that would go into partnership with the federal government to deliver the secure solution for the running of the e-ticketing.
“What we have done before now is the Request for Qualification (RFQ) at the end of the exercise. We have pre-qualified five firms and we have issued them requests for proposals, meaning that they have been asked to submit their technical and financial bids,” he stated.
He said both NRC and ICRC intended to come up with a preferred and reserved bidder.
