At the Procurement Conversion Training for the Procurement Cadre in parastatals, institutions, commissions and agencies of Federal Government, held in Lagos on Monday, the bureau maintained that public procurement officers have a crucial role to play in national infrastructure development in terms of skills and competencies that are critical to delivering a transparent public procurement system which will guarantee good value for money.
Director-General, BPP, Mamman Ahmadu, explained that in view of the government’s commitments training of the officers in the cadre remains a continuous and sustained exercise at the Bureau, as they play a crucial role in the development of the country.
“By the time we finish the conversion training including the subsequent editions, all officers in the procurement department of all agencies of federal government would be professional procurement officers. This is because we want to stop situations where unprofessional officers handle procurement responsibilities and so that is the target, it is to ensure that all officers who conduct public procurement processes are professional procurement officers,” he said.
According to him, there is a need for the Bureau to take the lead in the reform process while developing the kind of capacity muscles needed for the success of the reform through regular training which is germane.
Ahmad, represented at the event by Director, Energy Infrastructure, BPP, Babatunde Kuye, further warned officers not to fall short of the law in any respect as errant officers will not escape all applicable sanctions entrenched in the PPA 2007, ranging from imprisonment up to the tune of five years and more.
The Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Gida Mustapha, said the government was aware of the calls for the procurement system to hasten the process of delivering critical services and infrastructure to the citizenry, adding that its office has confidence in the BPP to coordinate implementation of the public procurement reform (PPR).
Mustapha who was represented by the Director, office to the SGF, Mbaeri Nnamdi, further said the government’s position is to ensure that procurement processes are perfected in such a way that corruption antics will be reduced drastically.
“We understand that the government spends so much on projects, contracts and in doing that, it requires a strategy to position the regulatory agency in a manner whereby corruption tendencies are minimized and project abandonment is reduced because if BPP is not well positioned, then the agency will not be in a position to tackle some of the challenges that people naturally see from time to time in procurement processes,” he explained.
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