The minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola has called for the review of the nation’s procurement laws for more efficiency and productivity.
The minster stated this on Thursday in Abuja when he featured at The Podium, a Kukah Centre town-hall platform tagged, “Fixing Nigeria” saying that the federal government would unveil energy mix for the country in the next few months’ time.
According to the immediate past governor of Lagos state, Nigerian leaders have abandoned procurement and focus on legislature. “We need to review our procurement laws for greater efficiency. What we have is glaring cases of inefficiency, lust for money, contractors complaining that they have not been paid the last three years even though there is a budget.”
Fashola who stressed the need to have a proper head count of the people for adequate planning and implementation, stated that the economy has kick-started as his ministry has received the nod two days ago to commence payment to contractors.
He said that some of the contractors have already gone back to site even as he blamed the nation’s electoral law on the low economic activities being witnessed since the process commenced.
He however noted that the most important thing is for the budget to be effectively implemented, saying, “an economy that stopped two and half years ago is kick-starting. We have got authority to incure procurement, so we are going to start payment. This is due to our electoral law, there is need to reflect on this and manage this kind of delayed electoral cycle,” the minister stated.
Earlier, the Director, Kukah Centre, and Archbishop of Sokoto Diocese, Mathew Kukah said through the Fixing Nigeria initiative, “the centre hopes to elevate the quality of political discourse in our country by generating ideas through robust and informed engagement between public officials and citizens and in the process deepening our nascent democracy.
“Rather than a debate in the adversarial sense, we insist that the tone at all times must be civil as the objective is to build trust between government and the people and together to find solutions to the myriad problems plaguing our dear country,” he said.
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