BPE recovers N68bn from over-inflated contracts
By Babajide Komolafe
Federal Government through the Bureau of Public Procurement, BPP, has recovered N68 billion from contracts that were over-inflated by some Ministries, Department and Agencies, MDAs, in the 2010 budget.
BPP’s Director- General, Mr. Emeka Eze, disclosed this during a chat with newsmen at the retreat organized for Permanent Secretaries in Lagos at the weekend, stressing that the activities of the Bureau have been able to block financial leakages, thereby saving money for the government,
According to him “since the BPP came on board ten years ago, it has so far achieved 70 per cent level of success in the implementation of procurement reforms in the country.”
He noted that the retreat for Permanent Secretaries which it began last year was quite strategic, stating that as the heads of the various MDAs, they are important in budget planning; implementation and procurement processes”.
Continuing he said, “the challenge before the BPE is that with a new change of guard, especially at the political level, we need to begin to educate them more and more again. As for the public system, everybody is almost attuned to it. But the very important stakeholders that will make the system work are the political bosses and we must continuously educate them”.
To enhance its activities, the BPP Director General disclosed that apart from setting up a legal, framework which is at the level of fine tuning, the Bureau has developed in_house software to quicken procurement planning process.
“We have set up a legal framework. We are at the level of fine tuning the implementation. Besides, we have developed in_house software. With this, in two hours, a contractor can get his procurement plans documented rather than the manual means that takes two three months. What can be done in two_three months can be done in three hours now,” he said.
He further identified some other challenges facing BPP to include resistance by the elites to procurement reforms, stating that efforts are being intensified at educating the stakeholders, the contractors, consultants, implementers, policy makers and political actors.
“The elite are religious. They have religious leaders backing them up. You will be amazed how religious leaders get involved in this interest. We have the political elite; we have the civil service elite, contractors’ elite, consultants, in other words, those who have been benefitting from the old order who get jobs because their own brothers are in charge.” he said.
On the delayed payment for local contractors, Eze said the provisions in law was clear on it, stating that if within 60 days of submitting certified invoice, the contractor is not paid, the law requires that interest on delayed payment based on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) inflation rate should be paid to the contractors.
In his goodwill message at the event, the Head of Service, Professor Oladapo Afolabi, stated that the retreat was quite germain in the light of procurement and budget implementation in the country, adding that such preparation would reduce mistakes in the entire procurement, budget and budgeting process.
