Fides Media Living the Faith
By Mmaduabuchi Onwumelu
The Managing Director/ Chief Executive Officer of the Anambra State Bureau of Public Procurement, ASBPP, Architect Okey Ezeobi, says the ease of doing business in Anambra State is becoming better and interesting on a daily basis.
Arc. Ezeobi who stated this in Awka while fielding questions from newsmen said that a lot of positives had been noted and said about Anambra State under Governor Chukwuma Soludo.
The ASBPP boss announced the commencement of a 6-day capacity building workshop on Procurement Practices for senior officials in the 21 local government areas of the state.
According to him, the workshop would enable stakeholders to discuss the practices of procurement in the state and proffer innovative and standard ways of improving the processes towards the betterment of society and eliminate corrupt practices.
He said the training was put together by the State Bureau of Public Procurement in collaboration with the Ministry of Local Government, Community Development and Chieftaincy Affairs.
Speaking further on the idea behind the programme for the local government stakeholders, the Anambra BPP Supremo explained that it targeted to entrench accountability and transparency in the utilization of public funds in the state, in line with the governor’s vision to ensure adequate value for money.
Ezeobi said the new direction and disruptive change the governor was bringing was one that would build back public trust in government, as the people were now made to know how their resources were spent.
‘Procurement is a process that must reflect transparency. It tells the people what the government is doing and affords them enough information to interrogate them
‘As public officials, the local government leadership must be accountable in their handling of public funds.
‘Anambra State has made significant improvement in its procurement process. Recall that the Federal Government had earmarked about 16 framework states to train their officials on the procurement process. Unfortunately, many of these states are not up and doing, with so much irregularities in the way things are done.
‘But they observed that Anambra’s website has been active with relevant information and they said they want to work with Anambra State.
‘That’s why the World Bank was at the State Investment Summit held recently in the state capital.
‘It is this same transparency that Mr Governor has engendered in the state governance that we want to deepen at the local government level.
‘The entire Anambra State procurement process must be well-defined so that the ordinary Anambra person would know that the taxes collected from them are being deployed appropriately.
‘We are also looking at co-opting staff of the LGAs on secondment to become staff of BPP, to enable them to get the requisite training on procurement.
‘The idea is that every transaction in the state must have a Certificate of No Objection, CNO, certifying that all necessary conditions and thresholds that guarantee accountability and transparency are met,’ he added.