Public procurement, certification and Power: Why Nigeria must stop confusing turf wars with governance
By Precious Ebere-Chinonso Obi
The controversy surrounding the Bureau of Public Procurement’s (BPP) Nigeria Procurement Certification Programme (NPCP) is not, at its core, a legal crisis. It is a governance stress test, one that reveals how Nigeria often struggles to distinguish institutional reform from institutional rivalry.
Recent objections attributed to the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply Management of Nigeria (CIPSMN) have framed BPP’s certification initiative as illegal and overreaching. That framing deserves careful scrutiny, because when professional debates drift away from statute and public interest, they risk undermining the very systems they claim to protect.
The BPP is not a discretionary agency. It is a statutory body established under the Public Procurement Act (PPA) 2007. Section 5 of the Act is unambiguous about its mandate. Among other responsibilities, the Bureau is empowered to: Formulate procurement policies and guidelines (Section 5a); Coordinate training and capacity-building programmes for procurement professionals (Section 5k); and maintain national procurement databases and contractor classifications (Sections 5h, 5q, and 6f).
Nowhere does the Act prohibit the BPP from initiating or coordinating a professional certification framework. More importantly, nowhere does Nigerian law confer monopoly certification rights on a single professional body within the procurement space.
This distinction matters. The PPA is outcome-oriented: efficiency, transparency, value for money, and due process. It is not an instrument for institutional gatekeeping.
Globally, certification is a recognised mechanism for validating competence in public procurement, a field that directly controls between 20–30% of national expenditure in most developing economies, according to the World Bank.
Nigeria’s own experience supports this. Multiple public sector audits and World Bank governance diagnostics have repeatedly identified weak procurement capacity as a root cause of: Contract cost inflation, project abandonment, poor value-for-money outcomes, heightened corruption risk.
The NPCP, developed with World Bank support, responds directly to this deficit. It is not an academic credential competing for prestige; it is a competency-based framework designed to professionalise procurement practice inside government where failures carry fiscal and social consequences.
One argument implicitly driving the resistance is the fear of institutional dilution that multiple certification pathways weaken professional coherence. Nigeria’s own professional history contradicts this assumption.
The accounting profession has long functioned with parallel statutory bodies such as ICAN and ANAN, both legally recognised and contributing to national capacity. Their coexistence has not collapsed standards; it has expanded access, competition, and professional depth.
Public procurement, which sits at the intersection of law, economics, engineering, and governance, arguably requires more specialisation not less.
Perhaps the most troubling dimension of this debate is the escalation of a statutory interpretation disagreement into criminal investigation. Legal ambiguity is not criminality. In democratic systems governed by the rule of law, disputes over mandate are resolved through judicial interpretation, not prosecutorial intimidation.
Dragging a statutory agency and its leadership before anti-corruption bodies over a policy tool developed within a clear legal framework sets a dangerous precedent. It blurs the line between accountability and institutional sabotage.
The OECD has consistently warned that regulatory uncertainty and inter-agency conflict weaken public sector reform far more than technical capacity gaps.
This debate should force a more honest national conversation: Does Nigeria want a procurement system that merely complies, or one that performs?
If the goal is performance, then the country needs: More trained procurement professionals, not artificial scarcity, competency standards aligned with international best practice and Institutional collaboration rather than exclusionary control.
The suggestion that BPP should pursue legislative backing to evolve the NPCP into a fully chartered professional body is, in fact, a constructive path forward. It would clarify roles, institutionalise standards, and eliminate unnecessary friction.
Public procurement is not a ceremonial function. It determines whether roads last, hospitals function, schools are completed, and public funds deliver real value. Weak procurement systems cost citizens far more than bureaucratic disagreements ever will.
Framing BPP’s certification initiative as illegitimate distracts from the real issue: Nigeria’s urgent need to professionalise how public money is spent.
In this context, the NPCP is not only legal, it is necessary. And those genuinely committed to strengthening Nigeria’s procurement ecosystem should be asking how to improve, integrate, and scale up such initiatives, not how to suppress them.
Because in the end, procurement reform is not about who controls certification. It is about whether the Nigerian state can finally deliver value with integrity, competence, and consistency.
- Precious Ebere-Chinonso Obi is the CEO of Do Take Action and an independent consultant on edtech, climate change, public policy, and women’s procurement empowerment.
