blogs.cfr.org/campbell/2012/02/29/guest-post-nigeria-cleaning-up-procurement/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Reportedly, Nigeria’s President
Goodluck Jonathan has invited World
Bank officials to vet all federal
government contracts. “Very soon we
will get people from the World Bank to
be at my office. For every contract we
want to award, irrespective of the
structures we have on the ground, they
will assess it so that if a job is supposed
to cost N10,000 and it’s awarded for
N10,000, the likelihood that the
contractor bribing anybody will be
reduced,” Jonathan was quoted as
saying.
World Bank Senior Communications
Specialist Obadiah Tohomdet has said ,
however, that Nigeria has not formally
contacted the World Bank over the
vetting of procurement
contracts. Tohomdet termed the
scheme “an idea in the making by the
President.”
Critics argue that setting up a World
Bank contract review desk in the
president’s office is “a vote of no
confidence in the government.” They
point to Jonathan’s failure to
inaugurate the National Council on
Public Procurement, as authorized by
the Public Procurement Act of 2007,
and his use of the Federal Executive
Council to approve contracts. Osita
Okechuckwu of the Conference for
Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) stated
that Nigerians “don’t need any foreign
body to do the work we can
successfully do.” Zakari Mohammed,
speaking for the House of
Representatives, noted that the World
Bank experts may be paid in hard
currency, which would be “another
burden on government.”
Jonathan’s initiative is, in some ways,
reminiscent of Liberian president
Samuel Doe’s use of American
financial experts in 1988-89 to help
manage Liberia’s finances. The Opex
(Operational Experts) project (pdf)
consisted of seventeen experts who
were given control over accounts in
Liberia’s Ministry of Finance and the
National Bank of Liberia. Their mission
focused on improving revenue
collection, expenditure control, and
information processing systems.
The project experienced some success
in bringing civil service, military, and
pension salaries up to date and
increasing revenue. However, after a
year, the U.S. and Liberian
governments mutually agreed to
terminate Opex. Controls were
circumvented and policy reform
measures were not implemented.
President Doe’s lack of commitment to
the project proved especially
damaging. Doe and his advisers
retained control of some public funds
outside the Ministry of Finance and
would not give Opex access to them, as
the funds formed the basis for
patronage, power, and wealth.
Jonathan’s proposal appears to limit
the World Bank experts’ role to an
advisory one, rather than granting
them control, yet a domestic backlash
may be brewing among Nigerians who
view the initiative as impinging on the
country’s capabilities and sovereignty.
Removing corruption from
procurement contracts also carries the
potential to damage officials’ ability to
dispense patronage, and is likely to be
resisted as much in Nigeria today, as it
was in Liberia in the late 1980s.
Political systems in which patronage is
deeply rooted are difficult to reform in
part because of both ‘top-down’ and
‘bottom-up’ pressures, according to
University of Oxford (Jesus College)
Professor Nicholas Cheeseman.
Successful politicians’ ability to push
reform is limited by their indebtedness
to those who have supported them,
while at lower levels, people worry
that if they stop acting on a patron-
client basis, while everyone else
continues to do so, they will lose out.
“To my mind,” Cheeseman argues, “it is
precisely the combination of pressure
from above and below [that] is what
ensures that patron-client relations are
so durable.” While Jonathan’s
proposal–reportedly still ideational–to
reduce corruption in procurement
contracts is commendable, it is likely to
be governed by patronage networks’
‘invisible hand.’