МОШЕННИЧЕСТВО В СФЕРЕ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫХ ЗАКУПОК: МАСШТАБЫ РЕФОРМИРОВАННОЙ ФЕДЕРАЛЬНОЙ СИСТЕМЫ ЗАКУПОК НИГЕРИИ

Аннотация

Fraud was among the major corrupt practices that pervaded the old Nigeria’s federal public procurement system and rendered it grossly inadequate to meet the much-desired national development needs. Against this backdrop, between 2000 and 2007, the Nigerian Federal Government took the necessary steps and reformed the country’s public procurement system to, among other things, eliminate all the forms of underhand practices. Among the major outcomes of the significant procurement reform is the enactment of a national procurement law – the Public Procurement Act 2007 and the institutionalization of a procurement regulatory body – the Bureau of Public Procurement. However, despite the changes in the legal and institutional landscape of procurement, fraudulent practices still persist in the Nigerian procurement system. The main objective of this study is to examine the various dimensions of procurement fraud perpetrated by government officials and companies under the reformed procurement policy in Nigeria. Data for the study were collected from secondary sources and analyzed using thematic and descriptive-interpretive analysis techniques. The study concludes that the incidence of fraud in Nigerian procurement system, remains alarming. They manifest in many forms, such as falsification of procurement documents, and the inflation of contract sums, among others, which result in huge economic losses on the part of the government. The paper thus suggests, among   other things, a pragmatic demonstration of genuine political will by the executive arm of theNigerian Federal Government through the strict and unselective application of the sanctions stipulated in the PPA as the most effective measures for mitigating the debilitating phenomenon.