The Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), Monday said that its audit system is being strengthened in a bid to tackle corruption in the procurement processes.
Director General of the Bureau, Adebowale Adedokun, said this when he appeared before the House of Representatives Committee on Public Procurement to present the Bureau’s 2024 budget performance, and defend its 2025 proposal.
He decried the budgetary ceiling placed on the agency, which he feared would hamper this objective among other strategies it plans to adopt to improve the procurement system.
He said the bureau proposed the total sum of N72, 775, 250, 713. However, the budget office allocated a ceiling of 3, 283, 021, 838, a sum he noted, was in exclusion of personnel budget of N649, 558, 451.59, adding that the capital allocation of N289, 418, 688 for the year was inadequate to achieve any meaningful reforms and addressing the core mandates that will realise effective contract administration.
“We also realise that we need to also intensify our audit exercise. It is better to prevent than to prosecute. Under our watch our strategy is to ensure we prevent misuse of funds through real time IT tools in procurement audit.
“We want to go digital in terms of our workflow, which means even if DG is not on seat, certification can be done anywhere in the country. We also provided for an upgrade of our national database of contractors and service providers,” he said.
Chairman of the committee, Hon Unyime Idem, said they were mindful of the ceiling imposed on the agency and would do something about that.