By Okeoghene Akubuike
Dr Adebowale Adedokun, Director-General, Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), has stressed the importance of professional bodies in driving Nigeria’s development through effective public procurement.
Adedokun said this at a Strategic Engagement with Professional Bodies on Public Procurement Reforms in Abuja on Thursday.
He said public procurement was the mechanism through which public resources were transformed into roads, hospitals, schools, electricity, security infrastructure, technology and other essential services.
According to him, effective procurement improves government outcomes, creates opportunities for businesses and jobs, and ensures that citizens derive tangible benefits from public spending.
He said procurement failures could result in abandoned projects, poor-quality infrastructure, wastage of public resources and declining public trust.
“Procurement reform is not merely about changing procedures; it is about ensuring that public spending delivers lasting value to Nigerians,” he said
The BPP boss said professional bodies had a decisive role to play in ensuring that procurement delivered results, noting that the process required expertise from several disciplines.
He identified engineers, quantity surveyors, architects, accountants, lawyers, ICT specialists, project managers, procurement professionals, logistics and supply-chain practitioners, estate surveyors and valuers, environmental professionals and other specialists as key actors in the procurement process.
“No single profession or institution can manage the entire cycle alone. Effective procurement, therefore, requires collaboration and coordinated contributions from professionals with different areas of expertise.
“By strengthening professional standards, ethics, technical quality, capacity and accountability, they can help ensure that procurement delivers not only compliance, but results,” he said.
The director-general said the BPP was strengthening procurement processes from planning and budgeting through tendering, evaluation and contract award to contract management and project delivery.
He said the bureau was also advancing digitalisation, open contracting, data analytics, price intelligence, procurement monitoring, contract management, local content and the implementation of the Nigeria First Policy.
Adedokun, however, said the success of the reforms depended substantially on the competence, integrity and collaboration of professionals involved in public procurement.
“The government can not deliver these reforms alone,” he said.
He proposed stronger collaboration between the BPP and professional bodies in the areas of professional ethics, capacity development, technical standards, quality assurance and contract performance.
He said many procurement failures began before tenders were advertised as a result of weak needs assessment, inadequate designs, poor specifications, unrealistic cost estimates and inappropriate project planning.
Adedokun, therefore, called for multidisciplinary review teams to ensure that technical, financial, legal, procurement, logistics, environmental and project-management considerations were properly assessed.
He also urged stakeholders to focus more on contract performance rather than merely contract award, saying our responsibility can not end when a contract is awarded,the real test begins with implementation.
He said stakeholders must determine whether projects were delivered to specification and on time, whether value for money was achieved and whether Nigerians received the services for which public funds were spent.
The BPP boss said the ultimate measure of procurement should be the public value it created, rather than procedural compliance alone.
“Compliance is essential, but not sufficient. We must also ask: What value did this procurement create for Nigerians?
“A road that deteriorates shortly after completion can not represent value for money simply because the tendering process was properly conducted.
“A hospital filled with unusable equipment is not a successful procurement, and an abandoned project can not be considered successful because the contract was properly awarded, ” he said.
Adedokun said that the BPP would convene regular coordination meetings with professional bodies to make the partnership practical and results-oriented.
He urged professionals to work across disciplinary boundaries and ensure that their expertise translated into improved project delivery and better services for Nigerians.
“Public procurement is public trust.
“Together, we can ensure that professional expertise translates into public value; public value translates into development; and development strengthens the confidence of Nigerians in their institutions,” he said.(NAN)
Edited by Kadiri Abdulrahman
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