By Saturday, May 30, Nigerians, who have reposed a mountain of hopes on the ‘great man’ of our time, will start counting the days for the Muhammadu Buhari-led administration to monitor his party’s campaign promises. Among the key areas of campaign promises that will attract urgent attention include the promise by the All Progressives Congress (APC) president to accomplish certain feats in the first 100 days in office. The inauguration of the National Council on Public Procurement (NCPP), a feat that three other presidents before Buhari could not achieve, remains at the centre of that promise. Interestingly, procurement corruption accounts for over 60 percent of the total corruption in the public sector, according to a report released by NGO Network in 2010 in its review of Nigeria Corruption and Procurement Index.
Arguably, the tasks before the new government are enormous, but corruption, particularly in the public sector, tops the list. And public procurement corruption is the highest among reported cases. Since the public sector is largely responsible for the bulk of corruption cases (about 65 percent), then it will be correct to say that when public procurement corruption is tackled, corruption would have been reduced by at least that percentage.
Recognizing that public procurement corruption is the cankerworm destroying our economy, Buhari in his pledge to Nigerians during the campaign tour promised to lead the war against corruption. To buttress that point, he said, “The Federal Executive Council (FEC) which had turned to a weekly session of contract bazaar would be made to concentrate on its principal function of policymaking.” In other words, the NCPP will now have the statutory responsibility of driving the procurement process in Nigeria.
Civil society organizations (CSOs) in Nigeria, labour, the National Assembly and professional bodies and associations were the first to pick up the courage and confronted President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and his kitchen cabinet, otherwise called ‘loyalists’, as early as December 2007 when it became obvious that the president had, on the advice of this group, refused to inaugurate the NCPP. Surprisingly, the function of the council was hijacked by the president’s kitchen cabinet and loyalists as the de facto members of NCPP.
The World Bank Country Procurement Assessment Report (CPAR) exercise carried out on the instructions of the then President Olusegun Obasanjo in the year 2000 investigated the procurement system in Nigeria, with the primary objectives of reviewing the country’s public sector procurement structure, including the existing legal framework, organizational responsibilities and capabilities, and present procedures and practices, including how these may differ from the formal rules and procedures; and make possible a general assessment of the institutional, organizational and other risks associated with the procurement process.
Some of the World Bank’s observations in the assessment report indicated that Nigeria had no specific law or other Act of parliament regarding public expenditure or procurement. The Ministry of Finance, with the authority vested on it by the constitution, issues “Financial Regulations” (FR) which regulate and delegate the responsibilities of public procurement and financial management at the federal level. The FR is essentially an internal set of rules for financial and economic control of the federal administration containing regulations concerning composition of tender boards (TB) and the limits of their jurisdiction, and regulations concerning the actual procurement process. The report observed then that as at that time the procurement regulations in the states consisted mainly of local financial regulations based on the federal FR, supplemented with circulars and guidelines from within each branch of administration in the state governments.
The weaknesses observed by the bank in the then procurement and legal system include that the Nigeria financial regulations were not a law or an Act of similar authority, but an administrative document, which could be amended by the minister of finance without regard to fundamental rights of the suppliers or contractors. Therefore, the rights of the suppliers or contractors with regard to the protective measures of, for example, open advertisement, public award criteria and so forth, were only protected by the goodwill of the government in power at any given time. In addition, the FRs were superficial in their statutory regulation of the actual procurement process.
There were other observations in that report which include that the then regulations on public procurement had no permanent measures for surveillance and control, there was no permanent body outside the purchasing entities monitoring and controlling the procurement process, and there was no central policymaking entity in the area of public procurement as this was left to ad-hoc circulars issued by the Ministry of Finance and in some cases the presidency. Others include issues of complaint mechanism, thresholds, tender boards, as well as the absence of a Codified Contract Law (CCL) but a law of contract based on case law.
The World Bank reported that circulars and guidelines regarding procurement were issued by many administrative bodies both at federal and state levels. This fact was repeated recently, precisely on October 11, 2013, when the presidency issued circular No. SGF/OP/l/S.3/T.1/172 spelling out the ‘policy guidelines’ for federal administration. This includes an update of thresholds for different tender boards and a policy of open competitive tender whenever possible. There is a proliferation of circulars that have been issued at federal and state levels by different public bodies with the purpose of clarifying elements of the FR. The large number of different circulars and guidelines is a symptom of the major shortcomings in the FR that are discussed in the following paragraphs. As a remedy, the introduction of a uniform system of procurement, together with a centralized body of control and monitoring, was proposed.
The principle of award of contract for goods and works is a combination of price and quality and for services, quality is the only criterion. Therefore, there is a need to restore and strengthen the professional procurement cadre and allow them to practice their profession. The procurement function should be carried out by these professionals.
Mohammed B. Attah
