She made disclosure at a one-day capacity-building workshop organised by the office in collaboration with the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) and the Association of Public Procurement Practitioners of Nigeria (APPON).
The AGF said, “Prior to the implementation the Cash Management Guideline and the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) in January, 2023 by the OAGF Cash Management Team and the GIFMIS Team in collaboration with the World Bank, the Capital Development Fund was committed to the tune of over N1.5tn.
“These commitments remained so for months indicating that the actual cash needs of MDAs were ignored in the releases of funds to the MDAs thereby slowing down the utilization of already allocated funds while government continuously pay interest on borrowed funds already committed.
“As of today, through the policy, the Treasury have successfully processed and released a total sum of N743.737bn from March to August 2023 while a total sum of N487.421bn is currently being processed for September and October, 2023.”
In his welcome remarks, the National President of the Association of Public Procurement Professionals of Nigeria (APPON), Mr. Emem James Kanico lamented that overtime, efforts that officers from other cadres in the civil service engaged in assignments that were supposed to be carried out by procurement officers, which violated the public procurement act.
He further called on the federal government to “Sanction any MDA that contravene the provisions of the procurement in respect with individuals qualified to carry out procurement processes.”
Participants at the workshop included directors and officers of procurement from various ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) across the country.