The Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) has said it is working to achieve the World Bank-funded Sustainable Procurement Environmental and Social Standards Enhancement Project (SPESSE).
The Director-General of BPP, Mamman Ahmadu said this in a statement on Monday in Abuja, while expressing support to the SPESSE team in the bureau.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the SPESSE is funded through the World Bank finance support.
Ahmadu expressed resolve to support the SPESSE team and promised to engage all stakeholders to key into the process of developing a professional procurement system that will meet global standards.
He said that the SPESSE project was designed to start from 2020 – to 2024 with 23 ministries as pilot organisations.
The statement also quoted Prof Bola Afolabi, a SPESSE Senior Procurement Specialist as saying “the project is aimed at professionalising procurement in Nigeria’’.
According to Afolabi, the set benchmark is to establish a professional procurement practice of world-class standards.
He said that the programme would require about 80 million dollars to become fully operational.
The procurement specialist said that 80 per cent of the budget was meant to establish centres of excellence where stakeholders would be trained and retrained to align with government policies.
The statement also quoted Bayo Awosemusi, a procurement specialist with the World Bank as saying “all stakeholders, including private practitioners should be involved to enable the project to succeed’’. (NAN)
