African Development Bank (AfDB) has approved Transmission Company of Nigeria`s, TCN`s, NTEP -1 projects in a board resolution in Abidjan. The NTEP is one of the projects under TREP financed by AfDB that is targeted at rehabilitating and expanding parts of the transmission grid in the North West, South South and the South East.

The project would reconstruct old transmission lines and build new ones as well as construct new substations, contributing to further increase in TCN`s transmission capacity. GM stated that, even though the approval has just been given, the company had already concluded environmental studies including resettlement action plan in which people that would be affected by the acquisition of the Right of Way (RoW) for the proposed transmission lines were identified, the report had been submitted to AfDB.

The advert for the pre-qualification of contractors had been carried out under advance procurement and evaluation of submissions from consultants that submitted Expression of interest for the procurement of consultancy for the project is on-going. Adopting the use of advance procurement in the execution of its projects, which has given TCN lead time, reducing procurement period by 6months. The procurement processes for the project is about 70 percent completed, meaning that execution of the projects under NTEP-1 would soon commence in earnest, even though it has just been approved by the AfDB board. TCN further noted that the NTEP-1 projects would address some transmission lines and substations requirements in the North West, South South and South East regions of the nation