The APPN Chairman Paying a Visit to the Managing Director of the Nigeria Public Procurement Authority

“On the sidelines of my personal business visit, I made a courtesy call to the office of the Director General of the Nigeria Public Procurement Regulatory Authority”, said Mr. Madoda Mngomezulu, the Chairman of the African Public Procurement Network (APPN).

Indeed, on December 8, 2020, the Chairman made a visit to Nigeria as a courtesy visit but it rather had a business connotation as both, Mr. Madoda Mngomezulu, the Director General of the Eswatini Public Procurement Regulatory Authority and Mr. Ahmadu MAMMAN, the Director General of the Nigeria Public Procurement Regulatory Authority, discussed procurement, especially the challenges of the Procurement Reform in Africa “noting that self-policing has contributed to the reform in Europe and North America”. Convinced that it isn’t fatality, they agreed that “it will take change of attitude among practitioners to get to that level together with the introduction of consequent management which is lacking in Africa”.

Both Directors seized the opportunity to get down to APPN business by talking of the wish to congregate for the Second General Assembly next year in Eswatini. Eswatinit was getting prepared to host the APPN Second General Assembly this year but COVID-19 has changed the program a while.

Nevertheless, the APPN is trying other way out by experiencing online conferences at present in order to rather use that means of gathering in case COVID-19 is still there or there is any other hindrance. The wish is to meet in person as it was during the first General Assembly. But now, the focus is on the online sessions, especially the knowledge and experience sharing sessions organized by the Technical Secretary of the network with the financial and technical support of the World Bank and the African Development Bank.

Such virtual conferences are really appreciated by country members; at least, it was what Mr. Ahmadu MAMMAN and the two other colleagues around, namely Mr. Aliyu Edogi Aliyu (focal point of Nigeria in the APPN) and Mr. Ishaq Yahaya, an engineer, said.

Those conferences are serving as transition to the Second General Assembly with a serious look at COVID-19; and the relevant theme discussed so far during the sessions is related to COVID-19 and is framed like this “Procurement in Emergences-COVID-19-Country Experiences”. The sessions constitute for country members a framework to express their challenges, worries and hope with legal measures and reforms to adapt to the situation vis-à-vis COVID-19.