From Adanna Nnamani, Abuja
Hadiza Dagabana, Director of Legal and Regulatory Affairs at the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), has demanded that the Public Procurement Act of Nigeria be changed.
The Public Procurement Act, passed in 2007, doesn’t, in her opinion, reflect the realities of the modern world.
This was disclosed in a statement co-signed by the Commission and Identification for Development (ID4D) Project.
She said: “the Public Procurement Act was passed in 2007. We are in 2023. A lot of things have changed over the years and there are so many gaps in the Act. It is time for an amendment.”
She described the workshop as impactful, urging the participants to put into practice the knowledge acquired.
In her “Overview of Public Procurement Act (2007) and its convergence with the World Bank Procurement Regulations for Borrowers,” Princess Iwok, the Commission’s Acting Director of Procurement, urged Nigerian public institutions to embrace transparency and accountability in all of their activities while underlining that penalties are applied for breaking the public procurement rules.
Iwok listed “bid rigging, collusion, splitting of contracts, procurement fraud, manipulating procurement documents, wilful denial of bureau and its officials access to any procurement records, and using phony documents” as some prevalent procurement offenses.
She highlighted some of the sanctions for violation of the Public Procurement Act to include imprisonment upon conviction, among others.
Iwok emphasised that both the World Bank Procurement Guidelines and Nigeria’s Public Procurement Law emphasise the importance of procurement planning in relation to their convergence with the Nigeria Public Procurement Act 2007.
She cited the World Bank Procurement Guidelines and Nigeria’s Public Procurement Law as two sources that support transparency and competition in procurement procedures.
Continuing, she argued that “while there are some similarities between the two procurement frameworks, it is important to note that the World Bank Procurement Guidelines are generally more comprehensive and detailed than Nigeria’s Public Procurement Law. As such, borrowers in Nigeria that are subject to the World Bank Procurement Guidelines will need to ensure that their procurement practices are consistent with both frameworks,” she stressed.
Meanwhile, the Director General and Chief Executive Officer of NIMC, Engr. Aliyu Abubakar while speaking, charged members of the Management of the Commission to ensure strict compliance with the provisions of the country’s Public Procurement Act.
The NIMC boss stressed the need for similar training to be held more frequently to ensure improved capacity of team members on contemporary issues in public procurement.
In his statement of the workshop objectives, Project Coordinator, Nigeria Digital Identification Project, Musa Odole Solomon described the meeting as geared towards updating participants on contemporary issues in procurement, adding that “there was the need for understanding the meeting point between the country’s procurement laws and the World Bank’s procurement regulations.”