Procurement Observation and Advocacy Initiative (PRADIN) has appealed to President Bola Tinubu to constitute and inaugurate the National Council for Public Procurement (NCPP) as mandated by the Public Procurement Act. 
 
The organisation lamented that despite the huge investments and resources in the fight against corruption over the years, wastage and corruption in high places have persisted. 
 
National Coordinator of PRADIN, Mohammed Attah, made the call at a media parley with Civil Society Organisations in Abuja on Wednesday. 
He argued that extant provisions in the PPA 2007 that provide for establishment of the NCPP were passed by the National Assembly 17 years ago, but  previous past Presidents had failed to inaugurate the council till date. 
 
Citing provisions of Section 5(1) and 148 (1) of the 1999 Constitution as well as the Finance (Management Control) Act of 1958, Attah maintained that only an NCPP, with the Minister of Finance as Chairman, can consider, approve and amend the monetary and prior review thresholds for the application of the provisions of Public Procurement Act 2007 by procuring entitles.

He said by implication, the threshold presently in use without council’s approval is illegal incorrect.  He also explained that by law, every Director General of BPP was to emerge after inauguration of the council to serve as secretary of council.
 
Attah submitted: “The Council is required to approve contracts and Associations of Partnership with the BPP, which will facilitate the discharge of its functions and to go into liaison with relevant bodies or institutions at national and international levels for effective performance of its functions under the Act. By these provisions, the law envisages a Council before the Bureau to serve as its Secretariat, but in the present circumstances, it is the Bureau without the Council; a case of a child without a father.
 
“By implication, all the ‘Director Generals’ appointed in the past for BPP can be described to have illegally occupied the office, since they were not appointed in line with due process of the law.” 
 
Continuing, he said: “And only last week, as reported in some national dailies, the Council for ‘Ease of Doing Business in Nigeria’ under the chairmanship of the Vice President, Kashim Shettima, scored BPP zero per cent among three other government organs. BPP as a quasi-judicial body, with a regulatory mandate, has in the last years become the defendant in procurement issues, as against being the prosecutor.”
 
Attah added: “During the Jonathan era, BPP was indicted in the Abuja Airport second running contract. At the start of President’s Buhari tenure, BPP was indicted in the NNPC oil block controversies as reported in the media then, among others. It is evident from the ease of doing business report, which scored BPP zero percent, that the Bureau has become unproductive.”
 
He stated that appointing BPP Director General, without the recommendation of the Council after competitive selection that has been the case in the last 13 years, is unhealthy for the nation.
 
“A person who lacks the adequate and relevant qualifications required by law should not hold office as head of a procuring entity if we follow the letters and content of Section 11(9) of the CIPSMN Act 2007. It states unequivocally thus: ‘A person shall not be entitled or engaged as the head of any Supply Chain Management of any organisation unless he is a member of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply Management of Nigeria, qualified by examination’. Thus, he or she cannot sign the Public Procurement Audit report statutorily required to be submitted to the National Assemble,” he said.