The Bureau of Public Procurement has launched a Beneficial Ownership Scheme aimed at identifying and eliminating fraudulent activities within the procurement process.
This was disclosed by the Director-General of BPP, Dr. Adebowale Adedokun, on Monday during a global press conference themed ‘Renewed Hope Through Strategic Procurement.’
Adedokun emphasized that the scheme would help the agency identify civil servants or public officials involved in illegal activities.
“Our duty, as the Bureau of Public Procurement, is that there is what is called a beneficiary ownership scheme. That will enable us to detect staff or public or civil servants who, by virtue or in any form, engage in these practices,” he said.
The BPP is collaborating with institutions such as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, and the Code of Conduct Bureau to ensure accountability in the procurement process.
“Together, you know where my work stops? It’s where the work of EFCC, ICPC, and CCB begins. They have a lot of institutional and legal capacity. All I need to do is to share documents with them,” Adedokun explained.
He stated that, for the first time in its history, the BPP is sharing reports on public servants involved in procurement fraud with the Code of Conduct Bureau.
“Under my watch, CCB will be receiving [reports], and so it’s their responsibility, not mine, to ask questions about public servants and civil servants who are directly involved in any procurement process,” he added.
Meanwhile the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Olanipekun Olukoyede, reiterated the EFCC’s commitment to addressing procurement fraud.
Represented by a Director at EFCC, Olukoyede stated, “Contract and procurement fraud represents a significant percentage of the fraud around, especially in the public sector. As an agency, the EFCC recently introduced a new Department of Fraud Assessment and Control to prevent procurement fraud before it happens. We want to assure the BPP that we will work closely with them to reduce such fraud to the bare minimum.”
The Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, Dr. Ogbonnaya Orji, praised Adedokun’s leadership, highlighting his extensive institutional knowledge of the BPP as a key strength.
“Dr. Adedokun represents one of the institutional memories of this organisation, and therefore, I expect that he will do very well. Ninety per cent of the corruption we see in the public sector originates from public procurement, in one way or another,” Orji said.
He emphasized the importance of collaboration between agencies to tackle these issues.
Adedokun added that the BPP is also addressing inflated project costs through its Price Intelligence Unit, which monitors real-time prices across geopolitical zones.
He emphasized that fostering open competition in procurement processes is key to lowering costs.
“We can only deal with the high cost of the project if we go with open competition. There’s no two ways about it,” he stated.
