By Victor Agi
In a quietly assertive move, the Government of Kenya issued a directive on June 5, 2025, mandating all principal secretaries, heads of state corporations, and procuring entities to transition fully to an electronic procurement (e-GP) system by June 10. Although the memo was not initially made public, its content and intent are clear and commendable. It signals a serious political will to reform public procurement, block leakages, and institutionalize transparency. For Nigeria, this development should serve as a loud wake-up call.
Procurement remains the financial heart of any government’s operations. It’s where intentions become contracts and public money is spent, ideally for the public good. But in Nigeria, procurement has become a black hole where opacity thrives, records vanish, contracts are inflated, and cronies profit at the expense of millions. Despite repeated promises, Nigeria has yet to fully embrace e-procurement, even though the benefits are clear, the infrastructure partially exists, and the cost of inaction is colossal.
Kenya’s transition to e-procurement is not just about digitization, it is about building public trust. The e-GP platform allows every stage of a procurement process to be tracked: from the publication of tenders to bid submission, evaluation, contract award, and payment. Every entry leaves a digital footprint. Every actor leaves a trail. This system, when properly enforced, drastically limits human discretion and opportunities for fraud. It builds confidence among genuine contractors and enhances the efficiency of public service delivery.
Nigeria, by contrast, continues to operate with patchy portals, poorly enforced rules, and high-level resistance to transparency. The National Open Contracting Portal (NOCOPO), introduced by the Bureau of Public Procurement to host procurement data, is underutilized and inconsistently updated. Many Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) still award contracts outside the public eye, bypassing open competitive bidding and flouting the Public Procurement Act, 2007. State-level portals are even worse, some are non-existent, others merely symbolic. This lack of transparency is not just a policy failure; it is a license for corruption.
The failure to institutionalize e-procurement is serious. The World Bank has estimated that digitising procurement could save Nigeria up to $270 million annually, with a ₦1.6 billion investment in 2020 showing promise, but the impact remains unrealised. Yet, more disturbingly, corruption in procurement in Nigeria is neither rare nor abstract. Between 2018 and 2020, the current Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, has, in a Premium Times report noted that, contract and procurement fraud resulted in estimated losses of ₦2.9 trillion taxpayer funds. This figure loosely translates to lost hospitals, unfunded schools, collapsed infrastructure, and deepening poverty.
The promise of e-procurement is not theoretical. Countries like Rwanda, Bangladesh, and now Kenya have demonstrated that with strong leadership and the right legal frameworks, digital procurement systems can drastically reduce waste, improve competition, and restore citizen trust. Rwanda’s Umucyo e-procurement platform, for example, has been globally praised for increasing competition and saving public funds. Why should Nigeria be left behind?
To move forward, Nigeria must first acknowledge that transparency is not optional, it is foundational. The federal government must stop dragging its feet, and should immediately mandate the full migration of all MDAs to a unified, functional e-procurement platform. This requires enforcing compliance with the NOCOPO system or establishing a new, more efficient digital procurement framework that supports end-to-end traceability.
But technology alone is not enough. The system must be backed by law, enforced by independent procurement and audit units, and monitored by civil society and the media. Procurement officers must be trained to operate within this framework, and sanctions must be applied to those who deliberately circumvent it. Whistleblower protection must be strengthened, and public data must be made accessible in real time to allow citizens, journalists, and oversight agencies to scrutinize transactions.
The government must understand that the time for piecemeal reforms is over. Nigeria must move decisively and collectively towards a procurement system that is open, digital, and accountable. If Kenya can achieve this in a matter of days, Nigeria, with its resources, population, and democratic credentials, has no excuse.
At the Centre for Fiscal Transparency and Public Integrity, we believe that public procurement must be more than a transaction, it must be a transparent pathway for delivering public value. Nigeria’s future depends not just on what it spends, but on how it spends it. E-procurement is not just an efficiency tool; it is an anti-corruption solution and a fiscal management reform.
Victor Agi is the Public Relations Officer of the Center for Fiscal Transparency and Public Integrity and writes from Abuja