The House of Representatives Committee on Public Procurement has bombed the Burueau of Public Procurement BPP for budgeting and presenting N58 million for capital projects and for failing to monitor on-going federal government projects scattered all over many parts of the country in line with the provisions of its mandate in the Public Procurement Act 2007.
The House Committee also had rejected the understaffing of BPP and slow pace of execution of the capital projects undertaken by the agency in the 2022 budget of the agency due to envelope budgeting system by the federal government.
Chairman of the House Committee Hon.Ali Ahmed and other lawmakers at a budget defense by BPP said that the agency had been glossy underfunded by government and had failed to deliver on its mandate for many years due to it.
The lawmkers were furious and kicked at the budget session saying that the agency responsible for monitoring of all government ministries and agencies projects is underfunded to undertake this enormous responsibility in Nigeria.
At the Budget session, the Committee Chairman said that they ‘ll set up a sub-committee to liaise with the House leadership and the Senate counterpart with a view to increasing funding in BPP
The House Committee helsman and some other lawmakers also picked holes with the humongous amount of public funds expended by the agency on local trainings for its staffers.
At the budget session, the Director-General DG BPP Maman Ahmed said that the agency’s capital budget for 2023 is N58 million whereas the agency got N129 million for the same line item in the 2022 budget.
He further said that that there is significant improvements on the enforcement of compliance by the agency on the Ministries Departments and Agencies MDAs on the provisions of the Public Procurement Act 2007.
On the review of budget, he said that the the agency in 2022 got N161.6 billion for recurrent and overhead cost and N195 billion for capital projects.
He also stated that N473.4 million was budgeted and expended by the agency on personnel emoluments paid through the Integrated Payrolls and Personnel Information System IPPIS in 2022.
He also hinted that the the agency do surveillance on on all ongoing projects by the MDAs adding that it has a total of 112 personnel in its payroll.
A member of the House Committee Hon.Benjamin Kalu however expressed worries that the agency helsman is not as worried as the House Committee on the issue of underfunding of the agency
He said that the issue of underfunding of the agency had been recurring since the last four years budgets and called for an investigative hearing of the House on the benefitiary of this annual abnormality.
Deputy Chairman of the House Committee Hon.Kinsley Uju also lamented that the agency had not submitted procurement audit reports to the Committee on the MDAs in the last four years.
The Committee Chairman Hon.Ahmed in his ruling said that the agency is underfunded and the Committee ‘ll work to ensure that the BPP get adequate funds annually to function effectively.
