Reps Remove Adeosun as Public Procurement Council Boss

By Modupe Gbadeyanka

Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, has been removed as Chairman of the National Council on Public Procurement (NCPP).

Mrs Adeosun was fired from the agency by the House of Representatives, which passed a bill for an Act to amend the Public Procurement Act, 2007.

In the amended portion, the Minister was replaced with a person to be appointed by the President with the introduction of a new section 1(2)(a).

Also, Section 35 (1) of the bill increased mobilisation fee to contractors or suppliers from 15 to not more than 50 percent or more as may be prescribed by the Bureau, while section 35(3) prescribes 2 years jail term as punishment for any person or authority who accesses mobilisation fee and absconds or does not carry out the services or works commensurate to the fee paid shall be guilty of an offence and punishable with 2 years’ imprisonment or a fine equivalent to the fee paid or both.

Similarly, Section 25(3) of the law shortens the time provided in the bill for emergency procurement activity to ensure timely execution but the procurement entity acting with respect to paragraph (i) of this section shall notify the Bureau within 7 days of such action.

In an effort to increase public access to procurement activities, the House bill introduced a new section 5 (f) which mandates the Bureau to “publish the details of all contracts in the procurement journal, any other national newspapers and in their official website; while subsection (h) states that the Bureau shall maintain a national database of the particulars, classification, and categorisation of federal contractors, suppliers, consultants and service providers.”

Similarly, the new law provides for the establishment of Parastatal Tenders Board in each Federal ministry, extra-ministerial department and all agencies of government, and includes the National Defense and National Security Agencies which hitherto were excluded from the procurement processes.

A new subsection (e) was added to section 4 of the extant Act in order to promote the patronage of local contractors by all agencies of government which mandates the Bureau to “promote local content and industry in the execution of any project in Nigeria.”

Speaking on the matter, Speaker of the House, Mr Yakubu Dogara, said the bill amended to sanitise Nigeria’s business environment and improve the ease of doing business in the country by ensuring that Nigeria has value for money by ensuring smoother implementation of national budgets as passed by the National Assembly.