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Any Contractor Who Abandons Project Will Face Prison Term - New Public Procurement Act

Posted by Thandiubani on Thu 16th Mar, 2017 - tori.ng

A new law to control the unnecessary abandonment of projects by Nigerian contractors has passed the third reading at the House of Representatives.

House of Representatives Speaker, Yakubu Dogara
 
The “Bill for an Act to Amend the Public Procurement Act, 2007,” to sanitize the system has passed Third Reading at the House of Representatives in Abuja on Thursday. 
 
According to reports, the new changes introduced into the act has shorten contract processing and execution period. One of the new provisions is the raising of mobilisation fee on contracts from 15 per cent to “not more than 50 per cent.”
 
More importantly, another provision in Section 35(3), states that a contractor who has been paid the mobilisation fee but abandons the project, faces a prison term of two years on conviction.
 
It notes, “Any person or authority who accesses mobilisation fee and absconds or does not carry out the services or works commensurate to the fee paid, shall be guilty of an offence and punishable with 2 years imprisonment or a fine equivalent to the fee paid or both.”
 
The new law also makes provisions, simplifying contracts processing to shorten the time from the current average of four months in a bid to speed up the execution of jobs and procurement.
 
In addition, the new law removes the Minister of Finance as Chairman of the National Council on Public Procurement on the grounds that the ministry itself is a procurement entity, which should not be presiding over its own case.
 
In the place of the minister, the law has empowered the President to appoint the chairman from a pool of qualified persons.


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