Corruption in the new public procurement regime in Nigeria

Abstract

Corruption in the public procurement system has been a major obstacle to Nigeria’s economic development and, as such, it has remained one of the prime concerns of successive governments, both military and civilian, since independence. Prior to the advent of the Fourth Republic, corruption was perceived to have been prevalent owing to weak and inadequate procurement law and obsolete and unprofessional procurement practice, prompting reforms in the sector following the restoration of democracy in 1999. However, despite the legal and institutional changes introduced by the reforms, corruption persists and permeates every facet of the nation’s new public procurement practice. This paper examines the causes of corruption in the new Nigerian public procurement policy and practice. It finds that certain notable factors give rise to the persistence of corruption in the country’s procurement sphere. These factors include the following: collusion between public procurement officials and contractors; inadequacies in the Public Procurement Act of 2007 and the compromising of the procurement regulatory framework; government’s partial implementation of and noncompliance with the Public Procurement Act; and political interference and nepotism. The paper concludes that the Nigerian government needs to take pro-active measures to curb procurement corruption, in order to minimise its effects on the viability of the country’s public procurement system and to enable it to serve as a useful instrument for achieving long-desired social and economic development goals. Some recommendations in this regard are offered. The paper adopts documentary methods of data collection and analysis. These methods were found to be appropriate for interrogating the subject matter of the discourse and achieving the objective of the study.