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A independent portal to scrutinize procurement in Nigeria

In Nigeria, UNDEF supports a project to enable civil society to effectively observe and monitor public procurement, help legislative committees carry out their procurement oversight functions, and educate procuring entities and selected business organizations on the basic provisions of Nigeria's Public Procurement Act. The project, implemented by the Public and Private Development Centre, recently launched an internet portal for collating, analyzing and disseminating information on procurement observation.

At the launch of the portal, the Coordinator of Public and Private Development Centre, Chibuzo Ekwekwuo (pictured), said that while the project was independently funded by UNDEF, the project partners were working with the Bureau for Public Procurement to improve the level of access. "For procurement monitoring to achieve its intended objectives, CSOs and professional bodies need a mechanism to collate, analyze and take a sense of feedback from the various monitoring activities," Mr. Ekwekwuo said. "Without adequate capacity and relevant tools and mechanisms that observers need, citizen's observers of procurement may become mere motions to technically fulfill legal provisions, motions that may not produce the expected outcomes for which these legal provisions were made."

The launch was covered extensively in the Nigerian press, including in The Guardian and This Day.

 

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