By Secrets Reporters
The audit document on the National Population Commission, exclusively obtained by SecretsReporters, ends its procurement pages with a demand addressed to the Commission’s Chief Accounting Officer. He should explain, the document says, and provide the copy of the waiver from the Bureau of Public Procurement for the procurement method the Commission used. The demand stands at the foot of a schedule of procurements carried out in the census preparation years of the chairmanship of Nasir Isa Kwarra, who held the Commission from 28 October 2020 to 28 October 2025, and it is followed by the document’s own list of the safeguards that method bypassed.
Under the heading of some of the procurements carried out, the document lists fourteen procurements and states that the comprehensive detailed payments are attached to it. The fourteen items it lists, added together, come to N161,554,048,345.64. The document does not present the fourteen as the whole of the Commission’s buying in those years. It heads the list as some of the procurements carried out, and the sum of N161,554,048,345.64 is the total of the items the auditors chose to print on these pages. Every one of them was bought under the single procurement method for which the auditors demanded the Bureau’s waiver.
One item takes three-fifths of the entire schedule. The procurement of PDAs, the handheld devices bought for the census, is entered at N96,911,197,360.79. Printing of various materials is entered at N14,407,767,503.49. Procurement of various softwares is entered at N10,613,711,091.94. Under the Public Procurement Act 2007, open competitive bidding is the default method by which government bodies buy goods and services, and contracts of this size are awarded only after competition has been run and the process certified. The technology items on the schedule alone, the PDAs, the laptops, the softwares and the data set-up, total N120,724,731,002.67.
The items are the equipment and the services of the census the Commission spent those years preparing. The devices, the laptops, the softwares and the data connections were to run it. The vehicles, the jackets, the raincoats and the first aid kits were to field it. The printing, the calendars and the identity cards were to document it, and the consultants and the broadcast and media campaign were to support it. The next rank of the schedule runs as follows. Procurement of laptops and component is entered at N8,966,044,600.20. Procurement of reflective jackets and raincoats is entered at N6,181,370,643.08. Procurement of various motor vehicles is entered at N5,392,174,553.70. Procurement of APN SIM data, router and APN set-up is entered at N4,233,777,949.74. Two of the fourteen items are printing, and together the printing of various materials and the printing and supply of a historical events calendar, entered at N4,147,452,203.58, come to N18,555,219,707.07 of public money spent on printed matter.
The schedule continues with renovation and construction of offices at N2,299,344,123.61, procurement of Pelican boxes at N2,180,190,859.39 and supply of first aid kits at N2,065,615,734.13. Procurement of I.D cards is entered at N1,151,445,625.37. The field items among them, the reflective jackets and raincoats, the first aid kits and the identity cards, total N9,398,432,011.58. The services on the schedule are payment of various consultancies at N1,429,633,772.73 and broadcast and media campaign at N1,574,322,323.89. Added together, the consultancies and the media campaign come to N3,003,956,096.62, and the printing and supply of the historical events calendar alone, at N4,147,452,203.58, exceeds the two of them. The Financial Regulations subject the purchase of stores and services above the prescribed limits to the government’s procurement rules, and the Fiscal Responsibility framework binds every agency of government to obtain value for the public money it spends.
Against that schedule, the document sets out what the procurement method left behind. It lists, first, evidence of call for applications for pre-qualifications from consultants and contractors. It lists, second, evidence of advertisement for the contract in at least two national dailies, the step by which a government contract is opened to the market under the Public Procurement Act. It lists, third, quotation by at least three eligible contractors to select the most responsive bid. It lists, fourth, the Certificate of No Objection, the Bureau of Public Procurement’s certification that due process has been followed before a contract is awarded. The document records that the method the Commission used denied prospective suppliers the information and the opportunity to offer the goods and works needed.
The Public Procurement Act places responsibility for compliance with its procedures on the accounting officer of the procuring entity, and a procurement carried through in breach of the Act carries the exposure of the award itself. The document speaks throughout of one procurement method, not of fourteen separate failings. Its recommendation names that method, and it is for that method, covering the whole schedule from the N96,911,197,360.79 of PDAs to the N1,151,445,625.37 of identity cards, that the waiver is demanded. A waiver from the Bureau of Public Procurement is the instrument that can excuse a procuring entity from a step of the competitive route, and the copy of that waiver is what the document directs the Chief Accounting Officer to produce, together with his explanation of the method. The recommendation is the document’s closing word on N161,554,048,345.64 of procurements carried out at the National Population Commission under Nasir Isa Kwarra.
