By Victoria Ojeme

The Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) has announced its 5th PEBEC Awards Ceremony to take place today, Wednesday, April 26th, 2023.

According to Dr Jumoke Oduwole, Special Adviser to the President on Ease of Doing Business/PEBEC Secretary, the ceremony will recognize and honour ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), state governments, and private sector stakeholders who have made significant contributions to the ease of doing business interventions in Nigeria.

The event will take place at the State House Conference Hall (Old Banquet Hall) State House, Abuja, and will be held in two sessions. The first session will feature engagement with PEBEC partners, where they will showcase their various interventions aimed at improving the business environment in Nigeria.

The second session will be the Awards Ceremony and Dinner from 6 p.m, where deserving awardees will be honoured for their outstanding contributions to the efforts to improve ease of doing business in Nigeria.

The awards will include the Executive Order 001 Award for the Top 5 MDAs in the 2022 EO1 compliance ranking, Impact Awards to recognise the support of journalists, development partner institutions and individuals, the Judiciary Award, where Special Recognition Awards will be given to States Judiciary which have distinguished themselves in the operations and performance of the Small Claims Courts in their respective jurisdictions, Legislative Awards for stakeholders who collaborated to implement legislative interventions, and the Subnational EoDB Ranking Awards to honour States with the highest scores based on empirical data from MSMEs in the 2021 and 2023 subnational EoDB Ranking conducted by the PEBEC.

The PEBEC was established in July 2016 by President Muhammadu Buhari to remove critical bottlenecks and bureaucratic constraints to doing business in Nigeria. The Vice President, Professor Osinbajo SAN, GCON, is Chair of the Council.

This year’s ceremony will attract top government officials, captains of industry, key private stakeholders and development partners expected to be in attendance.