The Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, has refuted report by online news platform, Sahara Reporters alleging violations of some provisions of the public procurement act by the management of the company.
The Company in a statement by its General Manager, Public Affairs, Ndidi Mbah, stated that under the present management, no such thing had happened due process in the discharge of its functions to ensure unrestricted electricity supply to Nigerians, despite the difficulties involved had always been followed.
The General Manager explained that Section 43 of the Public Procurement Act, 2003; "A procuring entity may for this Act, carry out emergency procurement where the (a) the country is either seriously threatened by or confronted with a disaster, catastrophe, war, insurrection or act of God" was explicit.
She maintained that the section agreed that “the condition or quality of goods, equipment, building, or publicly owned capital goods may be seriously impaired unless necessary action is taken to maintain them in their actual value or usefulness!”
Continuing, She revealed that Nigerians ought to know; that in the discharge of its sacred mandate, TCN management has had to find ways to overcome multi-prone obstacles such as the scourge of insurgency and most unfortunately vandalisation, including swampy areas, forests, over flooding which causes erosion and natural disasters.
She said that “All these threaten transmission and the affected towers must be quickly repaired to forestall the partial or total collapse of the national grid”, adding that TCN transmits power from over 25 Generating Companies located at different parts of the country to eleven (11) Distribution Companies and some international costumers.
Continuing, she said “It was pertinent for Nigerians to know that the TCN has over 18,000km of 330kv and 132kv high voltage transmission lines and transmission towers traversing the entire nation to deal with. TCN has always displayed the highest level of competence and professionalism, especially with the significant signing of the ‘Service Level Agreement’ between it and distribution companies(Discos) across the country on zero level tolerance for outages amongst other things."
The Company's Spokesperson refuted claims that contracts were awarded to unqualified contractors stressing that TCN has in place the necessary Technical, Legal, Audit, and Procurement departments to ensure that those things never occurred.
“It is impossible for any underhand practice to take place in TCN not to mention contravention of rules. TCN operates within the ambit of the law for which all ratifications for the smooth running of its operations are received per the law. It is in the light of this that in line with section 42 of the Public Procurement Act 2007, for direct procurement, TCN obtained official approvals from the BPP for the projects Sahara Reporters alleged weren’t”.
While citing two incidences that would have plunged the nation into unnecessary darkness but for the timely application of the special procurement process, she said that “they occurred on the 21st and 28th of December, respectively in Katsita Village Yobe State and Maidugiri-Damaturu highways. One was as a result of vandalism while the other was due to insurgency for which the TCN had to mobilize resources to tackle the challenge”.
MBA said without the emergency procurement process, the affected areas would have been thrown into prolonged darkness.
Culled from Times Weekly
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