Rigorous scrutiny of tender files!

Information made public recently by stakeholders in public contracts that over 146 companies are on a firing line from public contracts process in the country may sound big, but not strange, for those who have been following evolutions of the sector in the country over the years.

Since the reorganisation of the public contracts sector in 2011 and the creation of a Ministry of Public Contracts to oversee its functioning, much water has flown under the bridge.

In fact, irrespective of reforms that came with the reorganisation, the public contracts sector has been hijacked by money mongers who use every available means, holy or not, to satisfy their selfish desires. The effective execution of projects seems to have been relegated to the backstage in the get-rich-quick manoeuvres of the actors.

The reasons advanced by the Minister Delegate at the Presidency in charge of Public Contracts, Abba Sadou, for the eventual exclusion of the 146 contractors, should their justifications not be tenable, range from slow execution of projects to abandonment. This may not be surprising to many who master the gymnastics contractors play to win contracts.

While some of the companies exist only in the briefcases of their founders who nose around for contracts in public offices, others pass for what they are not. It is even alleged that some contractors present tender files, win contracts and thereafter sub-contract them to others whom they judge technically and financially apt to deliver.

This raises the disquieting issue of how such contracts are awarded. Just from observation, there may be no gainsaying that some contracts are awarded to companies that do not have the technical and financial prowess to execute them.

Their bargaining power or, better still, the flexibility of the imaginary contractors to ‘play by the rules of the game’ appears to have taken a better of the innovations the reorganisation of the public contracts sector envisaged.

It always begins from the building of tender files. Either ill-adapted companies trick tender committees with faulty information on their technical and financial capability to execute a contract in question or in complicity with some members of the same tender board, the companies propose cost-effective rates to attract the sympathy of selection teams.

Once awarded; sometimes on ‘give and take’ basis, the companies are either left with very little to do effective work or are caught up with field realities which require beyond what they can offer. Hence, uncompleted projects abound with beneficiary populations left to suffer.

The discrepancy that has existed over the years between the number of contracts awarded, those engaged and others effectively executed lends credence to a school of thought that winning a contract in the country is not synonymous with executing it, at least wholly and efficiently.

Disturbingly too, the population in the midst of the misdeeds is made to understand that the contracts are awarded to one company and not the other on competitive basis after the different tenders from many competitors had been scrutinised.

The 146 companies that have been booked are just part of the lot that have sold ethics to the dogs to shamelessly destroy the public contracts sector in the country.

Excluding them from the system is good, but rooting off corrupt officials from tender boards is better. Complicity between the corrupt officials and impostor companies is damaging to the country’s image and a serious drawback to the long-term development vision being pursued by public authorities.

As the country engages another phase of the result-based programmed budget (2016-2018), and should vote holders subscribe to another school of thought that tender committees have been duped into awarding one contract to contractor ‘A’ and not ‘B’, it may not be gratuitous to also pray that those examining the tender files be more rigorous in their scrutiny.