Nigeria has received only one bid for a railway concession project worth around $2 billion, a procurement process adviser revealed on Wednesday.

“We received one bid today,” said Fola Fagbule, Vice president and co-head of advisory at Africa Finance Corporation (AFC).

The bid was submitted by a consortium led by General Electric. Others in the consortium include Transnet of South Africa, Dutch-based APM Terminals and China's Sinohydro Consortium.

The concession is expected to cover about 3,500 km of existing narrow-gauge lines from Lagos to Kano in the north and Port Harcourt to Maiduguri in the northeast.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, has been searching for partners to refurbish its old railway system (constructed by British colonial rulers before independence in 1960) as the deterioration of infrastructures has for decades hindered the country’s economic growth.

Anita Fatunji