The House of Representatives during the ongoing budget defence held on Thursday expressed grave concerns over the inefficiencies in the operations of the Bureau of Public Procurement and resolved to investigate a Deputy Director Accounts on Grade Level 16, who was born on January 8, 1996, but employed December 15, 1992 and promoted Deputy Director on January 1, 2019.
The lawmakers, who expressed the concern during the 2020 Budget performance and 2021 Budget defence of the BPP, also demanded for the utilisation of various subheads on N22.666 million spent on welfare packages, N17.912 million on local training, N57.7 million spent on local travel and international travels during COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in the 2020 Budget among others.
The lawmakers, who frowned at the submission of the 2015/2016 audited report of the Bureau in 2020, also chided the BPP management, which superintended on the audit report of 850 agencies (out of which 32 agencies have so far been concluded) for failing to comply with extant financial regulations on the submission of audit report annually.
Speaking earlier, Hon. Kingsley Oju, Deputy Chairman of the Committee, who expressed displeasure over the agency’s inefficiency, said: “I don’t think there is any other job provided in the schedule of your assignment.
“It baffles this committee that since the appointment of the DG, it is taking about four years to submit report from 32 agencies out of over 850 agencies for us to know whether they are complying with the law.
“We are shocked as a committee on public procurement that we don’t even have materials to work.
“We are doing budget defence, but this committee is vested with the responsibility to ascertain the usage of previous funds.
“I agree with you that audit is going on, but if your performance is less than five per cent, I don’t think we are ready to do the job.
“I therefore move a motion that the committee should mandate the Bureau to submit all procurement audit report of 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 before the end of this year.”
While responding to questions raised by the lawmakers, the BPP Director General, Mamman Ahmadu, disclosed that out of total sum of N1.485 billion allocated to the Bureau, N250.479 million was for capital expenditure, N750.060 million for overhead expenditure, while N484.236 million for personnel expenditure.
Ahmadu however observed that the total sum of N1.485 billion allocated to the Bureau was reviewed downward to N1.425 billion.
According to him, in order to consolidate on the achievements of the due process reform and to address some of the core mandates that will help realise effective contracts administration, the total sum of N250,478,701 was allocated to the Bureau in the 2020 Budget, but this was however reviewed downward to N190,363,813 in the 2020 amended budget.
