The ICPC has warned that Nigeria’s public procurement system remains the most corrupt-prone aspect of government spending — citing inflated contracts, ghost projects, substandard delivery, and abandoned contracts as recurring issues.
At a procurement-workshop for heads of procurement across ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) in Abuja, ICPC chairman Musa Adamu Aliyu described procurement as “the single largest channel of public expenditure and, unfortunately, the highest point of corruption risk.”
The anti-graft agency spotlighted common abuses such as: splitting contracts to evade approval thresholds, padding costs by as much as 300 percent, awarding contracts to ghost firms, duplicating items in different budgets, and delivering substandard or no work at all despite full payment.
To address the problems, ICPC urged all MDAs to publish procurement plans, make contract awards and implementation updates public (with photographic evidence), deploy digital procurement systems to create audit trails, and enforce rigorous handover documentation.
The agency also called for tougher legislative reforms including stiffer sanctions for procurement offences, possibly special courts for corruption cases, and standardisation of public-project contracts to minimise waste and delay.
