By Lucky Isibor
A Director in the Federal Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), Mr. Aliu Aliu has stated that the agency is building the capacity of Civil Service Organisations (CSOs) across the country to educate them on the use of all the tools developed by the agency in the award and execution of government procurements and contracts to be able to effectively hold government agencies accountable in the award and execution of contracts.
Aliu stated this at a one-day training organised by the Federal Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) in collaboration with the Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption Programme on the use of the upgraded Nigeria Open Contracting Portal NOCOPO held Monday,
According to Aliu, the CSOs who are watching to ensure that all government contracts are awarded in line with all the extant rules and regulations and that such contracts are also executed to specification also need to be equipped with the necessary tools to do so and understand what government is doing.
“There are supposed to be checks in what we on the government side are doing, everybody as an officer has his roles and responsibilities to carry out, but CSOs sit there to see that we’re doing it as prescribed and we’re doing it for the benefit of society; because when we sit in public offices what we serve eventually is the public.
“Now CSOs sits there to ensure that all the MDAs are doing things as prescribed and to the benefit of the society, hence they also need to have tools in order to be able to police us. So they also need to understand the things we’re doing, it’s not just to go and criticise, but they also need to know that they’re criticising properly, hence we organised this training so that they are educated and understand what we are doing”.
Aliu listed the reform Initiates of the federal government for effective and transparent public procurement processes to include the “Country Procurement Assessment Review (CPAR), establishment of The Budget Monitoring And Price Intelligence Unit (BMPIU), signing unto the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) which states that each state party shall, in accordance with the fundamental principles of of its legal system, take the necessary steps to establish appropriate systems of procurement, based on transparency, competition and objective criteria in decision making that are effective, inter alia in preventing corruption” and signing into the Open Government Partnership (OGP) in 2016.
While taking participants round the workings of the NOCOPO portal in a practical session, the facilitator, Mukuolu Adesina urged the trainees to note the special features of the portal which include the process of registration on the portal, the unique contract identification number referred to as OCID, adding that once opened any where in the world it will be identified as a contract in Nigeria. Other features of the portal include columns for the contract identification number (OCID), project title, budget year, currency denomination of the contract, budget amount, contract value, the contract implementing agency – Ministry, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
Adesina also took participants round the portal to identify areas of engagement with MDAs implementing government contracts. For instance, if a project that started in 2019 is still showing on the portal that it’s at the planning stage in 2024, such calls for query from CSOs and members of the public.
Over forty persons drawn from different civil society organizations in Edo State participated in the training.
The training was organised by the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) in collaboration with the Rule of Law and Anti-corruption (RoLAC) programme.
RoLAC programme which is in its second phase in Edo State has been championing reforms in the justice sector abd anti-corruption with emphasis on prevention of corruption. The programme is financed by the European Union and implemented by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA).