Tinubu approves debarment policy to sanction contractors for poor quality jobs

—As BPP saves ₦1.1trn in 1-yr, DG vows to end ‘business as usual’ in contract

By Johnbosco Agbakwuru

ABUJA — PRESIDENT Bola Tinubu has approved a debarment policy to sanction contractors who execute poor-quality jobs or abandon projects.

The Director-General of the Bureau of Public Procurement, BPP, Dr. Adebowale Adedokun, revealed this in an exclusive interview with Vanguard in Abuja.

“Debarment policy means if a contractor does a bad job, if a contractor fails to deliver quality work, that contractor can be blacklisted,” he said.

“Once a contractor who has collected government money refuses to do the job, or does a bad job, or did not complete the job, we will recommend blacklisting of that company—not only in Nigeria but internationally.”

He stressed that while erring contractors will be punished, those who deliver quality work will be encouraged, pointing to ongoing infrastructure works as examples of improved standards.

“Please take a ride to Lagos-Calabar; you will see quality of job. Take a ride to Abuja-Kaduna-Kano; you will see good job. Take a look at the ongoing work between Mararaba and Keffi. Look at electricity; today, there’s a lot of improvement,” he said.

“This is because everything that they want to buy, every equipment they want to buy, they must show us specifications.”

Looking ahead, he said the BPP will intensify support for local content and vulnerable groups in line with Tinubu’s Renewed Hope commitments.

“We are now going to enforce the Nigerian First policy as directed by Mr. President. We are going to introduce community-based procurement,” he announced. “And with all of this, the women affirmative procurement—these are new things that the President wants to unleash in procurement to the nation so that the youth, the women, the vulnerable groups will have certain projects given to them.”

He expressed optimism that these measures will stimulate rapid change and help tackle poverty.

“You will see a rapid, massive transformation in the way Nigerians do things and to reduce poverty,” he said. “Let’s put Nigerian people first, and with that, we can collectively achieve the dream of a Nigeria that looks as good as Dubai.”

Adedokun disclosed that the agency saved the Federal Government about ₦1.1 trillion within one year by blocking inflated contract sums and enforcing tighter scrutiny of public projects under President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda.

He said his first priority on assumption of office “a little over a year ago” was to ensure that procurement no longer served as a bottleneck or a conduit for corruption but as an “enabler” of transparency and value for money.

“When I resumed, what I noticed was that the President has outlined a lot of initiatives under the Renewed Hope Agenda,” he explained. “The question that came to me was: how will I ensure full implementation of Mr. President’s Renewed Hope Agenda? The commonest thing is to make sure that procurement does not become a bottleneck.”

He said procurement had long been perceived as “a stumbling block” to governance, both at home and abroad, a perception he set out to change immediately.

“What we did was to make procurement an enabler, an instrument for transparency, accountability, and value for money,” he said. “I set out to make BPP a responsive agency that the President and his team can depend on for transparency and accountability, and to ensure that money allocated for government projects is properly accounted for by ensuring that we do not inflate contracts and we do not give contracts to the wrong contractors.”

To deliver on this mandate, the BPP DG said he created a dedicated Price Intelligence Unit to benchmark project costs and stop overpricing.

“One of the key things I did was to set up what I call the Price Intelligence Unit. This unit was primarily designed to benchmark the cost of projects,” he stated. “We started to ensure projects are benchmarked, prices are fair, they are not over-inflated, and also to make sure that contractors get value for their investment.”

According to him, this tighter scrutiny has produced huge fiscal gains.“In one single year, a total sum of ₦1.1 trillion has been saved,” he disclosed. “This is even outside other projects that we are still collating, to just give an idea of what Mr. President has done in procurement in the area of preventing corruption.”

Illustrating the impact, he explained how realistic pricing frees funds for additional projects.“If you are to build a hospital for ₦10 billion, because of the prevention mechanism Mr. President allowed us to introduce, we did benchmarking and now found out that that hospital cannot be ₦10 billion but probably ₦9 billion,” he said. “That ₦1 billion that has been saved can now be used for other projects.”

He cited a paramilitary agency that was able to buy more vehicles after BPP reviewed its procurement request.“Without the price intelligence prevention mechanism, they asked for 10 operational vehicles at so-and-so cost; that’s what they would have gotten,” he said.

“But because we did the prevention mechanism—price intelligence—we were able to save some money. So rather than 10, they got 15.”

According to him, these are practical examples of “what it means to prevent corruption and to ensure there’s value for money.”

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