Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC), Prof. Tunji Olaopa, has proffered ways to end abuse of public procurement and ensure integrity in expenditure for national development.

He spoke at a webinar of the Procurement Professionals Association of Nigeria (PPAN) over the weekend.

Handling the topic, “Enthroning Integrity in Public Expenditure: A Procurement Question”, Olaopa noted that public procurement is not merely a purchasing and supply function, but an implementation instrument not only for budget execution, and a veritable economic growth instrument in achieving the ‘Nigeria First’ local content and made-in-Nigeria national economic diversification strategy.

To him, budget performance and credibility especially depend on the effectiveness and efficiency with which the procurement process converts Ministries, Departments and Agencies’ (MDAs) resource allocations, programmes and projects into functioning roads, medicines and drugs in hospitals, classrooms, security assets.

He decried a situation where procurement has turned into a high-risk domain for corruption, collusion, and mismanagement.

Thus, for him, there is a need to get the best from public procurement.

Olaopa said this could be achieved by the professionalisation of the procurement cadre and supportive capacity development programmes culminating in the Sustainable Procurement, Environmental and Social Standard Enhancement (SPESSE) programme.

“Cadre professionalisation and SPESSE are defining strengths, enablers, and investment enrichment leverages and opportunities to keep building procurement professionalism, competence, certification, and irreducible standards of professional practices in the procurement cadre. SPESSE is such a veritable benchmark programme designed to build sustainable capacity across procurement and related standards, including centres of excellence and scaled certification targets that must therefore be seen to be optimised,” he said.

The FCSC boss also highlighted the need to implement significant culture change, entailing “narrative shift” in procurement reform from viewing contracts as patronage – a tool for personal gain, nepotism, or political favour – to viewing them as an instrument of public value.

He urged the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) and others to track performance progress as a basis to report on trends, opportunities and progress, and then build on such gains by strengthening in-built independent verifications and transparency methodologies enforced in the procurement process.