CSO cautions Tinubu against World Bank recommendations on procurement bill

The Network for the Actualization of Social Growth and Viable Development (NEFGAD), a public procurement advocacy group, has faulted a World Bank comment/recommendation on the draft public procurement bill 2023.

In a statement on Wednesday, Akingunola Omoniyi, the head of office at NEFGAD, warned President Bola Tinubu against bowing to external pressure that is capable of undermining and derailing the successes recorded by the implementation of the public procurement Act in the last 17 years.

Omoniyi said the group has presented its views on the World Bank’s comments in a six-point position paper “Harmonised national procurement stakeholders and citizens on the draft public procurement bill 2023”,  to the president.

He noted that comments and recommendations by the World Bank are ” hypothetical without detailed consideration of the country’s peculiar challenges and yearnings of the people”.

Omoniyi said there is a need for the government to be mindful and not allow Nigeria to be “used as a testing ground for regulations capable of disrupting the smooth operations of the country’s public procurement system”. 

“The World Bank has recommended the stripping of the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) from its regulatory power of issuing certificates of No objection to contracts,” the NAFGAD chief said. 

“The Bank in one of its comments on the draft public procurement Bill 2023 termed the exercise as operational and not regulatory, hence, recommended it to be transferred to  Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs).”

He also said the recommendation if adopted by the federal government would “automatically revert the country to tenders’ board / pre-procurement reform era where everything relating to contracts starts and ends with the MDAs”. 

“Public procurement is the life wire of public governance and the main channel through which governments serve the people, it constitutes over 99 percent of the entire government’s spending, hence any framework around its operations must be guarded jealously and seek the input of the people it intends to serve,”  Omoniyi added. 

“The World Bank’s position recommending the transferring of such an important mechanism to corruption-proliferate MDAs is not only discouraging but contradictory and suspicious, claiming the World Bank in its budget support and loan agreements has prior and post review mechanism of issuing No objection certificate-based approvals to Nigeria as of today. “

He also said appointments into public procurement offices should be reserved strictly for “core professionals” through competitive selections as currently outlined in the Act, and “not through the backdoor and or based on political patronage”. 

“NEFGAD frowned at a situation whereby federal executive council (FEC) sits to award contracts, arguing that with Nigeria’s complexities and challenges of development, the country tends to benefit more by taking contract matters off the agenda of FEC,” he added.