Sustainable Public Procurement in Nigeria: An
Innovation Against Abandoned Projects
Public procurement
refers to all kinds of acquisitions of public goods and services. Hence, public
procurement is all-encompassing process such that it affects every naira and
kobo spent by government. All governmental activities entail the procurement of
a category of goods or services of some sort. The acquisition may be under
formal contract or not, of works, supplies and services by public bodies. It
ranges from the purchase of routine supplies or services to formal tendering
and placing contracts for large infrastructural projects by a wide and diverse
range of contracting authorities.
Over the years, public procurement
provided conducive atmosphere for short changing the society and
corruption. Many people become
multi-millionaires overnight without transparent means of how they mounted to
such level. Corruption is simply a
misuse of public office or position for a private gain. It is perpetrated
through bribery, extortion, influence peddling, nepotism, fraud, speed money or
embezzlement. A speed money implies a fast and cheap way for making quick money
illegally. Corruption may include misappropriation, indiscipline, abuse of office
and moral tepidity, among other unethical behaviours. These forms of corruption
manifest in both the public and private sectors. For corruption to take place,
the action must be intentional, in conflict with the principle of public
service performance as well as enjoying derivable benefits from the act. Monopoly
and discretion of an office without accountability, integrity and transparency
brood corruption. Thus, corruption is
commonly found where influence and discretion of public officials is preponderant
but accountability, integrity and transparency are absent.
Public procurement is part and parcel of governance
in any society but must be done transparently and efficiently to be of benefit
to the governed otherwise it becomes a bedrock of corrupt practices. In
Nigeria, unpatriotic and innate corrupt government officers use public
procurement for aggrandizement at the expense of public service. For instance, World
Bank Country Procurement Assessment Report (CPAR) indicated that by 1999, Nigeria,
as a nation lost a staggering $10 billion dollars every year to corruption in
public award of contracts. This was what prompted the then President Olusegun
Obasanjo to set up Bureau of Monitoring and Price Intelligence Unit (BMPIU),
“due process”. He then sent public procurement bill to National Assembly
between 2003 and 2004. The Bill was signed into law by the former President
Musa Yar’Adua of blessed memory on the 4th of June 2007. That
singular act has remained one of the most remarkable watershed in Nigeria
governance reform efforts particularly in the Public Procurement sub-sector. The
initial implementation of the procurement process under the watchful eye of
President Yar’Adua was reported to produce an encouraging initial result as
N102 billion was saved in a single year. The cardinal objective of Public
Procurement Law 2007 is to pro-actively address past anomalies and defects in
public procurement system. This includes absence of ombudsman regulatory
institution, lack of procurement thresholds and the need to effectively drive
public procurement process in order to achieve accountability, transparency,
openness, value for money and zero-corruption.
The major
concern to Nigerians in addition corruption is the abandoned public projects
littered across the nation. By 2012, about 12,000 federal projects were
abandoned as reported by Premium Times
(24/11/2012), an online Newspaper. It quoted a university don, Professor Kole Omotoso saying “an estimated 11,
886 Federal Government projects were abandoned in the past 40 years across
the country”. These projects worth trillion of Naira of public funds. Another
similar report from Vanguard Newspaper of 28th December, 2016
indicated that over five
trillion Naira worth of projects were abandoned across Nigeria. The paper
quoted Dr Abbas Tajuddeen, a member representing Zaria Federal Constituency in
the House of Representatives during an interview on the bill he is sponsoring
for the amendment of public procurement act. He said “today Nigeria has more
than N5 trillion worth of abandoned projects and if you trace the history of
these projects, you will find out that they are predominantly caused by
contractors’ neglect. We believe that by coming-up with an additional
legislation to provide for additional fines and damages against contractors,
issues of contracts abandonment will become history in Nigeria.” Nigerians are
the losers of abandoned projects in all fronts, first, we lost the hard earned
fund used for the construction of the project, lost the place the abandoned
projects occupy while they become an eyesore to the beatification of the
environment. Such abandoned projects are indices for lack of seriousness as a
nation
No doubt, Nigeria has
lost a lot of billions of naira due to the corrupt practices in procurement
activities at Federal level and many more from various states ministries and
agencies. It is however, a credit to the present leadership of President
Muhammadu Buhari as the first regime to continue the execution of ongoing
contracts awarded by his predecessor, President Goodluck E. Johnathan despite
being from different political parties. This is one of the sustainable strategy
of the present administration, a clear indication of seriousness and readiness to
serve the nation. Traditionally, every government in Nigeria abandoned ongoing
projects by their predecessors and started new ones while some regimes
abandoned their own projects. Some of the reasons giving for abandoning
projects are not due measures as reported by an online paper Naij (www.naij.com). The paper claimed that the national economy is disastrously
being affected by abandoned projects and stated that every new government
considers projects and programs of its predecessors more as legacy and ideas
rather than ways and meant to improve the people’s well-being. The majority of the
contracts for the abandoned projects were awarded to party men, political
associates, friends and family members of the political leaders, whom might not
even possess any technical knowledge needed to execute the projects. At the
same time, the skills of project design, monitoring and evaluation are a must
for project realization and benefitting the citizens.
Today, it is exactly ten
years since the public procurement bill became an Act of the Federal
Government. Has the abandonment of projects been stopped? If yes, then
Honorable Dr Abbas
Tajuddeen wouldn’t have been busy sponsoring the amendment of the Act. Has the
corruption from public procurement been stopped? The answer is dicey and at
best, one can say the corruption has been minimized, fraught with inefficacy,
delay and frustration to the budget implementers, contractors and consultants.
Let us examine the implementation process, the gap and how the sustainable
public procurement, an innovation can bridge this gap.
Ideally, application of
procurement rules appears to reduce prices of items for the benefits of the
nation because effective public sector procurement contract system hinges on a
desired degree of transparency, integrity, competence, competition, and value
for money. The procurement process in Nigeria can be broken
into nine stages.
The first
stage is planning an efficient Procurement process driven by needs assessment.
Here, officials of the Ministries and agencies are to assess the needs of their
establishments to accomplish their mandates in an efficient and cost effective
manner. It is done during the year before the coming budget year. The second
stage is adequate appropriation. This includes budget preparation, budget
presentation by Mr President at the joint sitting of the two hallow houses,
budget defence before the committees of national Assembly and eventual passage
of the budget into law. After the passage, the budget is uploaded on government
website for the information of all Nigerians and beyond. Stage three involves
advertisement in two major national newspapers calling for qualified bidders
irrespective of their personalities and backgrounds. The fourth stage is Transparent
Prequalification / Tender where conditions for prequalification are stated.
Normally, bidders are allowed six weeks for adequate preparations as sometimes
the requirements for the prequalification and bidding are herculean and only
attainable by serious bidders. The fifth stage is submission of the bids on or
before the deadline for the opening, normally 12 noon of a given day is set
aside for the opening of the bids before all the bidders in transparent manner.
At the opening session, all the bids are opened one after another while
recording the essential information such as cost of the contract, time of
completion, registration certificates, etc before the bidders. At the end of
the opening, some bids who could not meet up the prequalification requirements
are dropped and only those that passed the requirements are selected for the
next stage. Stage six is the follow up
stage after the bids opening. This is a stage for the Bid Evaluation by the
Technical & Financial Committee of the Tenders Board. Here, the Committee
examines closely/intensively the technical competent of the bids that passed the
prequalification (To be continued next week)
– With additional report from Engr.
Bashir Garba Ibrahim MNSE, FSEM
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