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The Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) has said most corrupt practices in the country take place during public procurement.
It also said contractors and government officials usually collide to perpetrate corruption via public procurement.
The Director General of BPP, Mamman Ahmadu disclosed these yesterday while speaking with journalists at the commemoration of the 2017 International Anti-Corruption Day in Abuja.
Ahmadu, who was represented by the Director of Energy at the agency, Engr Babatunde Kuye, said the best way to prevent corruption is to block the loopholes during procurement.
He said: “Public Procurement is an avenue where most of the corruption in public organizations are perpetrated as we have seen in all the trials of corruption going on and our position is to see , if we can improve in everything that can prevent corruption, it will solve most of the problems that we have, essentially the responsibility falls primarily on BPP, preventing corruption, so that we do not spend money fighting corruption after they had already gotten away with the proceed of their corruption.”
He said the BPP had developed contractor data base which contains all genuine contractors in the country.
He said with the data base, the issue of briefcase contractors would be unmasked.
We have been assured that in the coming years, we will be getting more resources to incorporate these instruments in our desire to prevent corruption, he said.
“It has already commenced, as we talk, we already have 50,000 contractors who have started registration on this system. Once, it is fully finished and approved, if you are not in that data base, you may not be able to do any contract with government. And that data base is going to be an open data base available to anybody, anywhere in the world. What this means is that if you wins a contracts, you will be able to go that system to know if you have the capacity to win that kind of job. It is all about transparency and accountability”, he said..
He said BPP’s position on anti-corruption has always been clear: the best way to fight corruption is to prevent corruption.
“It is cheaper, it does not come with the emotion of people having to go through trial, prosecution and later prosecution.” |
