The government’s decision to open up public projects in Nigeria to additional scrutiny has been welcomed by transparency teams, but everyone will share their enthusiasm.
When Onumonu Nonye visited the new laboratory at Ubahuekwuem Technical School, he expected to see busy academics surrounded by books and clinical materials. Instead, the building was empty, with no desks, doors and even windows. The renovation of the university, in Ihiala, in southeastern Nigeria, had been abandoned.
Academics were heartbroken that their new study rooms remained unfinished. The same happened to the manager, who was shocked when Nonye told him that the guilty company had been paid 25,000,000 naira (£52,601) to complete the job. ” says Nonye, who works as a procurement controller for the Center for Public and Private Development (PPDC), a civil society organization that advocates for greater transparency in public spending.
In Nigeria, which former British Prime Minister David Cameron once filmed and described as “fantastically corrupt,” bribes, inflated costs and abandoned projects are a huge problem.
In his role for the PPDC, Nonye sends freedom of information (FoI) requests to government ministries, requesting the main points of public contracts. He then goes to the sites of the structure to verify that the paintings have been made. All collected data is posted online through Budeshi, a platform that lets activists and members of the public know if their local school or gymnasium finished on time.
Budeshi, who has highlighted projects in Nigeria where paintings have been abandoned despite gigantic bills to businesses, helped motivate the creation of an online page that promises to publish data from more than 750 government agencies across the country.
The project, which won an innovation award from the Open Contracting Partnership, is one of several reforms that emerged from last year’s anti-corruption summit in London.
Every year, governments around the world spend trillions of dollars on public goods and projects. Such contracts, which involve complex plans and really extensive funding, offer the best opportunity for transplantation.
According to Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, Nigeria ranks 136th out of 176 countries, with a modest score of 28 out of 100. “Recruitment in Nigeria has been a major hotbed of corruption,” says Eva Anderson, Senior Legal Officer at Transparency International. “The former head of the BPP [Public Procurement Office] said that about 90% of bribes in Nigeria occur through contracts, and this figure does not contradict any of the studies we have done. “
Isaac Mokoulu, head of online procurement at BPP, which oversees the new portal, says the allocation will corrupt by making it less difficult for government workers to see if prices and tariffs have been inflated.
Each task will be assigned a unique code, allowing activists to track progress smoothly rather than collecting snippets of data published in other formats across other departments. “What this portal has is that it incorporates a feedback mechanism,” says Mokoulu. “Comments can go so far as to say, ‘Well, the portal reports that they’ve earned up to 70% of the payout, but what we’re seeing on the assignment site is only 20% complete. ‘”In response, the OPP would possibly send a surveillance team.
Hope agencies will automatically make the data publicly available. But Anderson discovers this optimism, noting that the portal is highly unlikely to come with defense and security spending, which is a developing concern. Historically, extractive industries have been a lightning rod for corruption in Nigeria, however, falling oil costs and increased efforts to root out fraudulent deals in the sector, as well as the war against Boko Haram, have diverted attention to security spending.
“Defense and security budgets . . . [they consume] now about 20 percent of government spending, and that doesn’t take into account the additional ad hoc spending on war,” Anderson says. “We are seeing a shift in kleptocracy, which is moving to defense and security contracts to exploit the lack of transparency in this sector. “
Former army leaders are estimated to have stolen up to $15 billion (£11. 4 billion), the equivalent of part of Nigeria’s foreign exchange reserves, through fraudulent arms deals. All defence expenditures are treated as such. ” Even regulations related to classified data are classified,” says PPDC leader Seember Nyager.
High-profile scandals involving the military, plus the arrest of Nigeria’s former national security adviser Sambo Dasuki for alleged $68 million fraud, may replace attitudes, Anderson says. 10 years in criminal proceedings after the court heard that the men had won weapons to fight Boko Haram because they had stolen the cash to buy them.
“We have to teach a lot of people, we have to organize trainings, even at the grassroots level. It’s one thing to provide information, it’s to get [people] involved,” Mokoulu says.
So far, the BPP has recruited and trained 40 civil society organizations to use the platform. The workplace also targets companies, which take on the task because it will give them more information about the bidding process, Mokoulu says.
Anderson says that while the program is a step in the right direction, there is a danger that corruption will advance if not all sectors are covered. Monitoring contract execution is crucial, he says: “Who tells you they have the product you offer?Or for it to have the promised quality?, there were great disorders with the suppliers who bribed the auditors.
And while some corporations would possibly welcome greater transparency, others would not, Anderson says. “Many other people have a lot to lose, and I hope they fight back. “