About five hundred and seventy seven firms have submitted bids to win insurance renewal contracts from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation’s (NNPC’s) oil and non-oil assets.
Speaking at a recent event, NNPC’s Group General Manager, Risk Management and Insurance, Mr. Modupe Bameke stated: “The essence of this public bid opening is to ensure that the Corporation complies strictly with the provisions of the Bureau of Public Procurement Act (BPP). All the bids will be opened in the presence of everybody to ensure that all entries are properly captured in line with the transparency principle of the NNPC,” Mr. Bameke said.
Also commenting on the contract, Group General Manager, Supply Chain Management, Mr. Shehu Liman, informed that the public opening bids measure was aimed at providing a level playing field for all bidding companies. “The idea is to select broking and insurance companies that are credible and capable, with track records of performance. What this means is that we are going to eliminate all those transactions that are not necessary,” Mr. Liman stated.
The breakdown of bidders shows that 245 brokers tendered for oil assets, 251 brokers tendered for non-oil assets while 37 insurance companies tendered for oil assets and 44 tendered for non-oil assets.
Representatives of the companies that tendered bids for the NNPC Insurance renewal programme and in whose presence the bids were opened applauded NNPC for sustaining the culture of transparency and accountability through the exercise.
The bid opening event had in attendance officials of the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP); Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI); Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB); and National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) as well as members of the civil society who served as independent assessors.