By Anas A. Galadima

Obong Ekaette spoke at the opening ceremony of a technical workshop organised by the Budget Monitoring and Price Implementation Unit (BMPIU) for federal procurement officers in Abuja. He accused the local governments and states of allowing corrupt practices to go unchecked.
“While corruption might be perceived to be high at the federal level,” he said, “it is definitely higher in the states and highest at the local government level.”
He accused the Nigerian public of promoting corruption by honouring individuals that made their wealth by looting public funds.
“The present situation,” he said, “in which the Nigerian society showers praise on and provides comfortable cover and soft-landing for public officers accused of corruption is not only a major impediment to the fight against corruption but remains both a national embarrassment and a tragedy.”
Chief Ekaette called on the National Assembly to pass the Public Procurement Bill into law so that corruption, especially in the process of contract awards, could be tackled.
He called on public servants to desist from registering companies and using them to bid for public contracts, describing that as “an unethical practice in which a public servant should not engaged.”
Prof. Kunle AdeWahab, special adviser to the president and head of BMPIU (otherwise known as “due process”), said in his welcome address that the country lost over N800 billion in the last 10 years to inflated contracts awarded by top government officials.
He noted that contract awards in the last three decades have failed to a large extent to be transparent. The “due process” mechanism, he added, has saved the country over N150 billion, with as much as N6 to N10 billion saved from a single transaction.
“The unit overseeing the policy (due process) has saved the nation about N180 billion in inflated contract costs. The unit has saved as much as N6 billion to 10 billion from one contract.”
He charged the participants at the workshop to learn best practices in each sector of procurement, having regard to timeliness, cost effectiveness, quality, standard, and maintenance facility.