The Solicitor General of Nigeria and Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Justice, Mrs Beatrice Jedy-Agba, Tuesday said the newly launched Federal Complex Contracts Process and Administration (FCAS) is designed to enhance operational efficiency and reduce financial risk.
The permanent secretary stated this at the 2023 Manual and Workshop Engagement with Legal Advisors and Key Stakeholders in Abuja.
The workshop was with the theme: “Strenghtening Contract Management and Compliance in Federal Governance.”
Jedy-Agba, at the programme, rued developmental challenges and lack of clarity arising from the contracts that government entered into despite having the public procurement act, fiscal responsibility act among others.
While frowning at ways and manners laws are being undermined, she noted that Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) are governed by law, saying: “You cannot just do what you like. We expect that you have capacity, which should reflect in the quality of agreement you are bringing.”
The permanent secretary added that legal advisors must do their best to avert failed contracts and also mitigate the effect.
On the way forward, the permanent secretary stated: “Collaboration is key to ensure effective implementation of projects we deliver on behalf of the government.
Also speaking, a deputy director in the ministry, Mr Augustine Uchechukwu Kalu, noted that the new move was to guide the ministry and various departments on how to navigate the FCAS platform and get results.
He said one of its fundamental objectives is to ensure that project not needed is not embarked upon.
On implementation plans, Kalu said about 40 MDAs have been unbundled.
The government, he noted further is very much interested in the process, assuring that it will not jettison it but carry it to a logical conclusion.
“We will look at the feasibility studies, Public Private Partnership arrangement, funding arrangement, due diligence, both country and out country so that projects are not abandoned,” Kalu said.
The chief consultant to the ministry on FCAS, Dr Mark Osa Igiehon, expressed government’s readiness to take action through the justice ministry to avert what happened in the case of P&ID contract.
He said government, by the new plan, would be able to enter into projects and contracts in a sophisticated way, using specialists not only to minimise possibility of project failure, but also to be able to process and record contracts in the most proper way.
“Government is now ready to take action on such high level, high valued and high risk projects so that in the future, we will have fewer contract failures and we would not have to pay huge sum of money on failed contracts,” Igiehon said.
