From Fred Ezeh, Abuja

Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) has given permission to tertiary institutions to abruptly terminate contracts of contractors handling their projects if they operates contrary to agreement.

It also asked the institutions to institute punitive actions against such contractors to serve as deterrent to others that might be nursing the idea of violating contract.

A statement from TETFund indicated that the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Sonny Echono, disclosed the decision in Abuja, at weekend, during the 2021 annual general meeting of the Procurement Professionals Association of Nigeria (PPAN) which also featured election into its executive positions.

Echono acknowledged the challenges of rise in cost of construction materials in the last one year, stating that the fund has been coping with the situation as it has designed ways of responding to it.

He said the agencies was working with regulatory authorities to get support towards ensuring that there were no abandoned projects in its beneficiary institutions.

“We are working closely with the regulatory authorities to see how we can get support and ensure that we don’t have abandoned projects, because ultimately, it is better to solve the problem today; the more you delay, the more the cost will increase and the greater the complications will be.

“So, we are working in a very fast manner with the contractors and the institutions on the matter. We are already meeting. The whole of last week we met with so many institutions that have such challenges and we continue for the rest of this week. We are finding solutions.

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“And some of them where the fault is that of the contractor, we are not only recommending termination but sanctions. But there are other areas where the fault is basically external to everybody,” he said.

He described corruption as one of the manifestations or incentives for mis-procurement, adding that a good procurement delivers on the objective especially of the procurement at the right time and at the right cost to the satisfaction of all.

“Procurement is the major source of pecuniary gain because more often than not, the contract system has become so endemic and embedded in our system that people also see it as a main source of unearned income.

“So, what we need to do is to professionalise the sector and ensure that those who carry out those activities are trained to do so. We need to reinforce the system, our checks, the regulatory functions, the role of all our anticorruption agencies should be more preventive.

“It is better to do it at the preventive end by putting measures in place to limit incidence from happening rather than thinking of arresting people and prosecuting them.

“Working with Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) and other anti-corruption agencies, we are designing mechanisms to improve on those processes that will detect, disrupt and also prevent them,” he said.

Chairman, Borad of Trustees of Public Procurement Association of Nigeria, Emeka Eze, expressed happiness at the clarification that projects approved for TETFund’s beneficiary institutions have no entanglements.

Eze said the approach encourages the institutions to engage the services of contractors of their choice as provided under the Public Procurement Act, adding that by so doing, TETFund was encouraging good procurement practice in the institutions.