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Peterside says no winner yet for Benin Disco

The Chairman of the Technical Committee on power sector reforms, Atedo Peterside has denied allegation of corruption in the privatisation of the power sector by … Continue reading Peterside says no winner yet for Benin Disco


The Chairman of the Technical Committee on power sector reforms, Atedo Peterside has denied allegation of corruption in the privatisation of the power sector by governors of Delta, Edo and Ekiti states.

The governors had on Thursday rejected the announcement of Vigeo Power Distribution as the successful bidder for the Benin Distribution Company by the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE).

The states are investors in the Southern Electricity Distribution Company which lost out in the bidding process.

Governors Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State, Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta State and Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State insisted that the process that led to the emergence of Vigeo Consortium lacks transparency.

However, briefing newsmen on the privatization process in Lagos, Mr Peterside said the allegation of fraud by Misters Oshiomhole, Fayemi and Uduaghan were pre-emptive as the Disco has not been handed to any of the bidders.

He said: “The 3 Governors appeared to be making their “complaint” because they feared that the Southern Electricity Distribution Company Consortium (Southern Consortium), which they favoured, might be edged out of the race to be declared as preferred bidder for Benin Disco by Vigeo Power Consortium (Vigeo). Obviously they presumed the latter to be the likely winner based on the outcome of the televised Commercial Bid Opening Ceremony which took place in Abuja on Tuesday 16th October, which event I presided over.

“It is pertinent to mention here that the NCP has not even declared a result yet and so no consortium has been announced as being the preferred bidder for any of the 11 Discos in Nigeria. At the end of the Commercial Bid Opening Ceremony, I explained that we still had to subject all the bids to a “material consistency/feasibility test” before making recommendations to the NCP.”

Mr Peterside, who said his team needed to clarify on the four allegations made by the governors, noted that “Southern Consortium is the only one of the 16 consortia that participated in the bid opening to have submitted multiple commercial bids for the same Disco.

“Their envelope contained two different commercial bids, both of which were signed by a Mr. Matthew Edevbie. The first bid was dubbed the ‘primary’ bid, while the other was dubbed an ‘alternate’ bid.”

He added that the alleged fraud was “a clear contravention of the Request for Proposal, RFP. We did not make a big issue of this on live TV because both the primary and the alternate bids fell below the bid submitted by Vigeo, and so neither bid would alter Southern Consortium’s ranking on the large screen. Instead, this matter was brought to the attention of the Technical Committee of NCP, which considered the breach and made recommendations to the NCP.”