Nigeria’s underdevelopment based on procurement failures – YPP presidential candidate

File: The presidential candidate of the Young Progressives Party, Peter Agada

The Young Progressives Party presidential candidate, Peter Agada, has blamed Nigeria’s poverty and underdevelopment on successive administrations’ failure to implement the Public Procurement Act, 2007, particularly provisions establishing the National Council on Public Procurement.

Agada said in a statement on Monday that the failure to enforce the law has contributed to wasteful public spending and hindered national development.

He said implementing the provisions would subject government projects to stricter scrutiny, reduce costs and ensure that public funds delivered tangible benefits to Nigerians.

“Implementation of these sections will interrogate 90 per cent of all the projects gulping Nigeria’s resources over the years,” he said.

Agada argued that the four core principles of public procurement—economy and efficiency, value for money, transparency and fair competition—had been neglected.

He blamed the procurement system for Nigeria’s development challenges over the past 27 years, insisting that establishing the council would strengthen accountability in government contracts.

“The savings alone from the forensics of projects can fund all the projects carried out in Nigeria’s Ward Intervention Initiative two or three times over,” he said.

The YPP candidate also called for reforms in engineering, procurement and contracting, citing the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road project as an example of why stronger oversight was necessary.

He said the proposed National Council on Public Procurement would strengthen the Bureau of Public Procurement’s ability to scrutinise contracts, monitor procurement processes and ensure transparency.

Agada proposed allocating N40m in non-Federation Account Allocation Committee funds to each of Nigeria’s 8,809 wards for community development projects.

“This idea is funding for ward development projects; we intend to send funding of N40 million in non-FAAC funds to every ward in Nigeria,” he said.

He explained that a 13-member steering committee would manage the funds and projects in each ward, guided by a development master plan.

On financing, Agada said the initiative would rely on foreign direct investment, land-title valuation, reduced wastage, subsidy savings and lean governance.

“We are not going to tamper with the current FAAC and tax structure,” he said, adding that forensic reviews would identify unnecessary expenditure and redirect savings to development projects.