OSAS EMMANUEL
House of Representatives Committee on Public Procurement (BPP), has decried low budgetary provision to the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), for the 2023 allocation, saying underfunding the agency has continued to have negative effect on the nations’ economy.
As a measure towards enhancing efficiency of the agency, the committee asked the Director General (DG) of the bureau, Muhhamad Ahmad, to increase the staff strength of the agency.
Chairman of the Committee, Nasir Ahmed, who presided over its budget defence session of the agency on Tuesday, at the main bowl of the National Assembly, lamented the decrease in the bureau’s capital budget from N197 million in 2022 to N58 million in 2023.
The committee frowned that the performing budget of the BPP does not make sense, being a strategic and important agency to the economic growth of the country.
The lawmakers also noted that the fundamental aspect of the agency’s budget, which is project monitoring, procurement and audit, has been removed in the 2023 budget, a development it noted, would hamper the main responsibility of the agency in the fiscal year.
The committee resolved to meet with their counterpart in the senate and fine-tune ways of increasing the budget to ensure procurement accountability of the nation’s budget for more productivity.
Ahmad told the lawmakers last year that he does not need money from government to run the agency, hence, his failure to propose a budget that is commensurate with the job expectation of his office, prompting the lawmakers to call for a thorough investigation to ascertain reasons behind his actions.
The lawmakers were also surprised that since the year 2014, the bureau has only audited thirty out of over one thousand government offices.
The committee resolved to ensure that the bureau produce an audit report of all agencies of government before end of the administration, or else, it will result to leadership failure on the agency, threatening to reduce its workforce.
