Emmanuel Onwubiko
One area of Nigeria’s public life that has yet to receive the needed legal frameworks and policy guidelines to check financial leakages in the management of public finance and in the funding of public projects is the procurement sector. Not long ago, an official of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Offences Commission (ICPC), Dr. Anthony Onyilimba, stated that 60 per cent of corruption cases are procurement-related.
In the last few years of the operations of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), over 75 per cent of the cases of graft against public officials were procurement-related. In most states, public utilities are in bad shape due to weak implementation of procurement laws. In the last few months, the director-general of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mounir Gwarzo, and that of the National Health Insurance Scheme, Dr. Usman Yusuf, were suspended for offences relating to violation of procurement laws. The poor state of procurement over the last 50 years is the reason for the mind-blowing corruption among public officials.
The major test in determining the indices of good governance, respect and strict adherence to the principle of transparency and accountability is the availability of empirical data to concretely establish the commitment or otherwise of public officials to the laws and statutes guiding the procurement and execution of public utilities or projects, which basically and fundamentally are meant to serve public good. The above mentioned fact finds legal bearing in Section 15(5) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended), which states: “The state shall abolish all corrupt practices and abuse of power.”
But our political history is replete with pragmatic evidence that points to the wanton disrespect of the available body of laws that safeguards public procurement from abuse and, most especially, since 2007 when the Bureau of Public Procurement Act was institutionalised and domiciled as a national legislation. The current administration has gone further in the abuses rained against Public Procurement Act. The director-general/executive secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme, who was kicked out by the health minister for offences relating to procurement, was reinstated by the government only because the man is a distant cousin of President Muhammadu Buhari. True, the legal frameworks on public procurement may be weak but there is, indeed, a national legislation on public procurement.
In writing, the following are what that institution was established to do as can be found in its website. The Public Procurement Act, 2007, established the Bureau of Public Procurement as the regulatory authority responsible for the monitoring and oversight of public procurement, harmonising the existing government policies and practices by regulating, setting standards and developing the legal framework and professional capacity for public procurement in Nigeria.
The vision of the BPP is as follows:
“Building and sustaining an efficient country procurement system that meets international best practices.”
Right from the inception of the BPP, with the signing of the law and the inauguration of offices for that institution, it would seem that succeeding administrations have always set out to fundamentally weaken it. The violation of the critical segments of this law makes any claim of probity on the part of the President highly unsustainable and unprovable. For the avoidance of doubt, Part One of the Public Procurement Act, 2007, is on the establishment of National Council on Public Procurement. These fundamental aspects of the Act have been violated with reckless abandon and, in the last three years, public procurement corruption has skyrocketed to an unimaginable dimension.
I had earlier stated that virtually all previous and the current Presidents have failed to obey the tenets of the Public Procurement Act by refusing to inaugurate a council, so the opaque and corrupt practices of awarding of multi-billion naira contracts for public procurements are still the order of the day with the Federal Executive Council acting as the contracts-awarding platform.
Adherence to the Public Procurement Act has also taken the back seat since the emergence of the current administration, to the disappointment of most observers who had been sold the propaganda that the current President was a man of integrity.
Transparency International rightly stated: “Corruption involves behaviour on the part of officials in the public sector, whether politicians or civil servants, in which they improperly and unlawfully enrich themselves or those close to them by the misuse of the public power entrusted to them.”
It is for the sophisticated nature of corruption currently in place among top government officials that Nigerians are seriously not satisfied with the bogus claims by such officials, like the information and finance ministers, that the current government has spent several trillions to fix the collapsed public infrastructure, which in any events are still dilapidated and dysfunctional.
The practical facts that stare most Nigerians in the face is the total collapse of such critical infrastructures like federal and state highways, educational and health facilities, including the presidential clinic, which was recently reported not to have the commonest medications for the benefit of patients due to the high rate of procurement corruption.
There is no doubt that all federal highways in the entire South East, South West and parts of the South South and northern Nigeria have collapsed even as government officials go about making bogus and unsubstantiated claims of spending public finances in fixing these dilapidated infrastructures. Where then are the people’s commonwealth?
Last June, the finance minister, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, was quoted as stating that the federal government committed N1.2 trillion on capital projects in the last 12 months.
The aviation sector is also not fairing well, with some of the basic safety infrastructure not being in place. The international airports in Lagos and Abuja are in very sorry state, with the Abuja airport about to become the ground for one of the worst cases of public procurement crime with the bogus estimate being bandied about as expected cost for building just one more runway, an estimate that could build a dozen runways elsewhere.
The ministry of defence is replete with procurement corruption and criminality, even as fighter jets are procured at almost six times the real costs. Official theft of public fund has indeed assumed disturbing trend even with the existence of laws against stealing of public assets and resources.
Nigerians must, in their numbers, speak out and demand accountability from this government at both the centre and the subnational levels regarding the monumental theft of our commonwealth by our public office holders through corrupt public procurement practices. We as citizens are not doing enough to stop this massive stealing going on. We must not leave the job for the National Assembly because the members were once governors and dipped their hands in our common till. The job of ensuring that the public procurement corruption is fought to a standstill is ours as citizens to do and we must do that now.
•Onwubiko is head of Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA).