Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Thursday stressed the need
for Nigeria to reduce the cost of governance in the public sector and entrench
transparency and accountability at all levels.
According to him, there was need to review the Procurement
Act of 2017, saying there may be need for the amendment proposal to be made to
the National Assembly on it.
Osinbajo, represented by the Minister of State for
Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, stated these in Abuja during the formal
inauguration of the Sustainable Procurement, Environmental and Social Standards
Enhancement.
The World Bank-sponsored SPESSE
project aimed to develop human capacity in procurement management in the public
and private sectors and to produce competent and intellectually sound
procurement professionals.
The SPESSE is domiciled in six universities across the six
geo-political zones of Nigeria.
The Universities are the University of Lagos, Federal
University of Agriculture, Makurdi; Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi;
Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria and the University of Benin.
While saying that the SPESSE was key to achieving and
maintaining sustainable physical infrastructure, Osinbajo said that if Nigeria
must achieve the objectives of the Economic Recovery Growth Plan and the
Sustainable Development Goals, the country must get it right in procurement,
environmental and social safeguards.
He said, “Nigeria must make progress in reducing the high
cost of governance in the public sector as well as be strengthened by
entrenching transparency and accountability at all levels of government, while
issues relating to construction, rehabilitation and extension of existing
buildings, acquisition of lands, purchase of laboratory equipment, disposal of
reagents and samples amongst others must conform with world standards”.
To achieve this, the VP said there was need to build
adequate technical capacity required for efficient and effective procurement,
environmental and social safeguard systems.
Speaking on the need to review the Procurement Act of 2017,
the Vice President expressed the satisfaction of the government in the existing
laws, saying if need be for amendment, proposal would be made to the National
Assembly on it.
“We are satisfied with how the Procurement Act of 2017 is
being implemented at the moment, but administrative powers to deal with legal
issues will be subject to when the National Assembly will have to debate and
agree on revolving such powers,” he said.
The Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, represented by the
Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, Sonny Echocho, said it was
time to grow home-grown experts in procurement to address issues in capital
projects.
He called for accelerated implementation of the projects.
“This will address issues of inefficiencies in procurement
and lack of compliance in social standards,” he said.
The Executive Secretary of the National Universities
Commission, Prof. Abubakar Rasheed, said Nigeria was finally on the path to
developing the much-needed critical mass of professionals in the fields of
procurement, environmental standards and social standards.
“The SPESSE Project is Nigeria’s first attempt at
institutionalising sustainable capacity building in the fields of procurement,
environmental and social standards, by offering professionalisation and
academic programmes in a custom-made, fit-for-purpose and sustainable manner,
through the centres of excellence.
“This project is a capacity building, one that assures
results across the entire Nigerian economy.”
Responding on behalf of the SPESSE host centres,
Vice-Chancellor of UNILAG, Prof. Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, expressed the readiness
of the Universities to host the centres, saying UNILAG already had over 12
functional centres.
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