The Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission said on Monday that the procedure the National Lotteries Commission used in awarding controversial $24.7m lottery contract was faulty.
The contract for 'lottery platform as a service', was awarded to a company known as e-Games Technologies Africa by the NLC.
But, another bidder, System Numeric, which had earlier submitted a bid of $67m, challenged the award process.
System Numeric had petitioned the House of Representatives to contest the decision of the lottery commission.
However, at an investigative hearing on the petition by the Joint House Committee on Public Petitions/Special Duties, the ICRC argued that none of the bidders satisfied the requirements for the contract.
The Acting Director-General, ICRC, Dr. Ghaji Bello, told the committee that none of the bidders had a financial model or a business case to qualify for the contract.
"There was no evidence that both companies were subjected to pre-qualification through a process of expression of interest to establish due diligence on either the local companies or their overseas associates," he said.
Bello added that only one of the bidders tendered a registration certificate and provided evidence of company management structure.
He said, "The request for proposal, though carefully prepared, did not address some key fundamental issues such as the gap in the bid opening and closing dates.
"This, coupled with the absence of a Public-Private Partnership model in place, occasioned by the non-preparedness of a business case, as well as absence of a well defined eligibility and evaluation criteria and absence of a pre-qualification report, raised doubts about the entire process."
But, the Director-General, Bureau for Public Procurement, Mr. Emeka Eze, put up a defence for e-Games Technologies Africa.
Eze clarified that the Bureau of Public Enterprises went for the company's bid because of the lower price quotation of $24.7m, compared to System Numeric's $67m.
The Lead Chairman of the House committee, Mr. Uzo Azubuike, on listening to the parties, ruled that members would retire to study the conflicting accounts of the ICRC, BPE and the two companies contesting the contract.
He added that the committee would make its finding public on a later date.
