‘Organisations with weak procurement strategies encourage corruption’

Diekola Oyewo, president of Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply Management Nigeria in this interview gives insights into the role that professionalism play in saving government and private organisations huge resources. Excerpt

What is the institute all about?

Professionals are a nation’s asset because they possess the required skills needed to shape the course of political and socio economic growth of that nation. But in Nigeria, the nation remains underdeveloped mainly because the professionals are prevented from performing their profession.

One particular step taken by the resent administration which is relevant to the philosophy of procurement profession is the Treasury Single Account whose main aim is to enhance transparency and reduce corruption. A striking similarity between the TSA and public procurement is that all eyes are focused in one direction. Once this is achieved, Control becomes easier, transparency is enhanced and errors, inefficiency and corruption are difficult to conceal.

This is what Public Procurement Act (PPA) No.14 of 2007 seeks to achieve, but its implementation (or non-implementation) makes its objectives UNATTAINABLE. For instance, the first part of the Act is the establishment of the National Council on Public Procurement. But for reasons best known to the immediate past administration, this first part of the Act was never complied with since June 19, 2007 when the bill was passed into law.

The Act further provides for the establishment of Bureau of Public Procurement which shall act as Secretariat for the National Council on Public Procurement and “which shall be headed by a Director General who possess the relevant and adequate professional Qualification and who shall have been so qualified for at least Fifteen (15) years before his appointment”. Again , for reasons best known to it, the immediate past Administration set up the Bureau of Public Procurement without the inauguration of the parent body-National Council on Public Procurement. To whom then has the Director-General of Bureau of Public Procurement been reporting? Does the Director-General of the BPP possess the relevant and adequate professional qualification as stipulated in the Public Procurement Act (no. 14 of 2007)?

About 90 per cent of corruption in Nigeria is traceable to public sector procurement. For example, it was recently reported in some of our national dailies that in 2011 a public servant in the presidency initiated the procurement of an item. The item for which the sum of US $ 6.9 BN was said to have been paid without proof of delivery was” procured” by the same initiator. Under a fully and properly implemented Public Procurement Act, this crime would have been difficult to commit.

The executive content of the procurement management function in the public sector is very negligible. For obvious reasons, the function has been prevented from growing to decision-making level and this explains why corruption thrives.

Our country has a lot to gain from every procurement organisation in all the MBAs (including BPP) headed at the decision-making level by procurement professional.

What is the position of purchasing and supply in government needs that your body enhances.

The similarity between the single treasury account and our profession is to see the best way to foster efficient and effective service. On the average about 60-80 percent of the requirement of industry, raw material, components spare parts, are handled by purchasing and supply professionals therefore any organisation that wants to thrive must make provision to strengthen the Procurement department because they by responsibility should have control over items being brought by any department in that organisation.

Human capital is an aspect that each organisation both government and private takes seriously how does your institution contribute to the development of human capital to feed into the system for effectiveness?

As long as we are concerned, we are training professionals and we have trained thousands of professionals. But is the government making use of these professionals? In any nation the major asset of any nation is the professional, if they make use of the professionals, they will see to it that the nation grows. But here in Nigeria, the major thing that is affecting the government is the inability of the government to make use of professionally train procurement experts trained by our institute in all the procurement engagement either in the civil service or military. Unless this trend is reversed by government, we will continue to have the corruption challenges we are grappling with today.

In the public procurement act if there was a council in place whose responsibility it is to elect director general who will certainly see to it that other staffs are employed and not just employed but will continue to train those in the job and ensuring that quacks don’t arise.

Apart from the previous government not doing things right are there plans put in place by your institute to curb these?

When it comes to that area we don’t wait for anyone to tell us what to do. Prior to the APC government coming to power, we had already held a meeting to strategise. You need to look into the procurement aspect of this great country. We don’t even know that something of this aspect will be revealing itself today. During the APC campaign they said that when they come into power one of the first thing they will do is to go into the procurement act 2007 so that it will be properly implemented. Till today we are still waiting. We all know that if it is implemented all these things happening would have been prevented.

Again a lot of people keep asking what really the solution to the nation’s problem is. It is simple. The solution is go and implement the policies which will block all the loopholes which is an anti corruption law that has no respect to anyone that go against it

How does your institute in Nigeria collaborate with others in sister nations to discuss matters of procurement?

We take the issue of collaboration very seriously. We travel see how our counterparts from other country operate. We also compare how they operate with the resources they have and the resources we have as well. Through all these steps, we now demonstrate this to help our country in order to reduce the exploitation from the foreigner on our resources.

What is your vision for this institution?

It is to implement the public procurement act. If it is implemented then the problem is half solved. Whatever the president succeed in doing, he cannot stay more than eight years. If we succeed in eradicating all the corruptive tendencies whoever comes after him will the person be able to sustain what he has done. There are proposals he has made but the problem is will those concern act on it? The challenge we are having is both with government own agencies and in private, Nigeria is still the same thing. We need a lot of effort and I know it is not a thing that can be wiped off just like that. It requires persistent, effective and efficient effort of professionals now and in future.