BPP Trains 800 Procurement Officers in Rivers
Blessing Ibunge in Port Harcourt
The Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) has concluded the training of no fewer than 800 procurement officers for its 2025/2026 Mandatory Continuous Public Procurement Capacity Development Training Programme (MCPCDTP).
The training, which was held at the PTDF Centre for Skills Development and Training, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, comprised two batches and was personally supervised by the Director-General of BPP, Dr. Adebowale Adedokun.
Speaking at the closing ceremony of the Batch B trainees for the 2025/2026 MCPCDTP, weekend, Dr. Adedokun stated that the programme was in line with the Public Procurement Act (PPA), 2007, which aimed at ensuring transparency, efficiency and value for money in government procurement of goods, works and services.
He explained that the aim for the capacity building was to improve skills and knowledge of officers handling procurement activities as a way of ensuring that processes are complied with, and ensuring that they are not unethical, bringing them to terms with latest developments in the procurement field.
He said that: “Over the last couple of years, the officers have not been up to date with their knowledge and so they could easily have been making errors, which may not be their fault.
“So, what the government of President Bola Tinubu is doing is to place priority on capacity
building and to ensure that people know what should be done at the right time, in the right
place, in the right quantity.
“Basically, what we’re doing is to reprogramme the mindsets of this generation of procurement officers who should or who are angry that things are not working well in terms of delivery of projects. So, and once delivery of projects is not properly done, corruption strive.”
Responding to questions from journalists at the ceremony, Adedokun noted that: “Nigeria belongs to all of us,” adding that the ability of the trainees to perform their role effectively will help government to deliver on good hospitals, good roads, help them to save costs and to avoid unnecessary duplication of projects and cost escalation.
He said training is not intended in fighting corruption but aimed at preventing corruption during procurement processes.
“So, this training is to build a generation of young officers who are coming into procurement to know that their action or inaction can cause government not to deliver on its mandates. 90% of government activities surrounds procurement.
“We have to focus squarely on these officers because it means that for Nigeria and government of Nigeria to succeed, this group of people must be on top of their game. And that is only when they can prevent. We are not fighting corruption in procurement. We are preventing corruption because if you fight corruption, you’re going to spend a lot more.
“But when you prevent it, it won’t even happen. Procurement is the engine room for prevention of corruption.
“Once the system is right, the processes are right, then it becomes easy for anti-corruption
agencies to effortlessly prosecute their cases because a lot of work had been done from the procurement end,” Adedokun stated.
He also explained that the people who have been trained between December till date can easily relate that the country needs to move faster, better quality of delivery of service.
Adedokun stated that BPP is multitasking, connecting all the people that make government to deliver, adding: “We have civil society groups that we’re also engaging. We’re engaging all the critical stakeholder by educating, by enlightening them, and by professionalizing their ability.
“This training is global; it has a global perspective to it because everybody’s watching what BPP is doing. The World Bank, development partners, contractors globally are watching and they can testify to the improvements in service delivery.
“We’ve trained batch A and batch B, totalling about 800. Selected from various Federal Governments, establishment and states. We have states representative. The 800 you see here is not the total number. We added a submission of over 1,600 people indicated for batch A and batch B, we only selected 800 who met the minimum eligibility criteria.”
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