Six months after emerging winner of bid for Afam Electricity Generation Company, Transcorp Consortium is yet to pay the N105.3 billion bid price, Managing Director/ Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the power plant, Olufemi Obademi, has said.
‘‘Transcorp which was the company’s preferred bidder is yet to pay and assume ownership of the plant.’’
This was even as the installed capacity of the plant has dropped from 1000MW to 270MW, representing a 77 per cent drop.
The consortium submitted a bid of N105.3billion to beat two other companies that wanted to acquire the electricity generation company (100 per cent equity).
The bidding for Afam closed in the second round. At the first round of bidding, Unicorn had emerged the highest bidder with a bid of N100.45bn; Transcorp submitted a bid of N89.37billion while Diamond put in a bid of N72.73billion.
It was when the potential investors were asked to go and reverse their bids for a second round that Transcorp Power Consortium which already operates the Ugheli Power Plant threw in the highest bid of N105.3bn. The winner is also to pay a BPE Management Fee of five per cent of the total bid value.
The Vice-Chairman, Technical Committee of NCP, Dr Ayo Teriba, who chaired the ceremony, had in May 2019, said the winning and reserve bids were subject to the approval of the NCP chaired by the Vice-President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo.
He said, “The transaction of the enterprises will legally come to a close with the signing of the Share Purchase Agreement and any other related documents by each preferred bidder as approved by the NCP.
“Payment will be made in naira through the Remita Retrieval Reference in favour of BPE; 25 per cent of the purchase consideration should be made within seven working days from the date of signing the Share Purchase Agreement. It was learnt that efforts are ongoing by the Ministry of Power to recover and reactivate some generating plants at the power plant in order to restore it to full generating capacity.