Immediate past Director-General of Bureau of
Public Procurement, BPP, Emeka Eze, told the Senate, yesterday that the number
of government projects currently abandoned across the country stood at 19,000.
He said
that besides duplication of office buildings, personnel and overhead cost,
there was the tendency for each agency of government to assert its authority in
the procurement process. Eze, who spoke at a one- day public hearing organised
by the Senate Committee on Procurement to amend the Public Procurement Act 2007
to provide for and adopt a local content policy and timely completion of
procurement processes, told the lawmakers that abandonment of the projects
occurred mainly because of non-payment for interim certificates for work done. He
said if there must be efficient service delivery among the agencies of
government involved in procurement and disposal of public assets, the
Federal Government should merge the BPP; Bureau for Public Enterprise,
BPE, and Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission, ICRC, into one strong
commission, in line with global best practices. Ezeh said: “It is my humble
opinion that now that the nation’s resources are dwindling, the right thing to
do is for the legislature to be courageous enough and merge all the three
agencies involved in procurement and disposal of public assets into a strong
commission. I want to assure that the nation will be better for it if BPE, BPP
and ICRC are merged.’’ Also yesterday at the hearing, the Nigerian
Institute of Quantity Surveyors, NIQS, in its presentation by the National
President, Mrs. Mercy T. Iyortyer, called for the synchronization of
project funding with project cycle as that would help avoid project abandonment
and ensure continuity of projects until they were completed. Iyortyer, who
presented the institute’s proposed amendments to the Procurement Act, explained
that the proposed synchronization could be achieved by means of medium-term
approach to project planning and budgeting.
By Henry Umoru & Joseph Erunke ABUJA
