The Federal Executive Council (FEC), this week, announced a plan to guarantee transparency and efficiency in the process of awarding contracts by the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
Briefing State House correspondents after the FEC meeting chaired by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the Minister of Education, Professor Tahir Mamman, said that the government will soon inaugurate the National Council on Public Procurement to handle its procurement processes as envisaged by the Public Procurement Act 2007.
The Public Procurement Act, which was signed into law by late President Umaru Musa Yar’adua on June 4, 2007, provides for the establishment of the NCPP, and the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) as the regulatory authorities responsible for the monitoring and oversight of public procurement as well as harmonising existing government policies and practices. The Act was put in place to allow transparency and ensure public participation in government procurement.
The late Yar’adua, however, failed to inaugurate the NCPP until he died in office. His successor, Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, who stayed in office for six years, also failed to inaugurate the council. Also his successor, Muhammadu Buhari.
Of course, the failure of the previous governments to put the NCPP in place has been condemned by experts and anti-corruption activists.
The minister said, and rightly so, that the present administration is determined to inaugurate the National Council on Public Procurement to allow the Federal Executive Council to focus on national policy matters.
“Until now, “the Federal Executive Council has always been seen by the media and members of the public as being a contract-awarding institution,” Tahir said.
The reasons previous governments ignored the Procurement Act are obvious. Their refusal to implement the Act has, chiefly, to do with what the then officials of government defined or held as their priority, in that case, corruption. They gave priority to transactions and corruption and neglected vision, strategy and policy.
Transactions provided the opportunity for corruption and that gave them more control over resources with the situation making it impossible for the government officials to surrender their power to to some institutional mechanisms like the procurement council.
A former Minister of Education, Obiageli Ezekwesili, had sometimes asked, rhetorically: “How do you begin to explain an illegality that one administration after the other has made since that law was passed in 2007? There is no other way to explain that illegality than to say that there is no incentive on the part of the political class to do what the law technically has recommended.
“That recommendation is the best way to direct the energy of the political class towards the most important activity that should worry them while leaving the council to operate in the way that it was envisaged. So, if they have no incentive to set up the council, it could only be because they are very much interested in transactions and the cabinet ought not to be interested in transactions.”
Therefore, the Tinubu-led administration should be commended for bringing the Public Procurement Act into practice as doing so will allow the government to concentrate on its core functions and activities.
