FG unveils Programme to Enhance Contract Management, Reduce Financial Risk
The Federal Government, on Tuesday, launched a programme tagged, Federal Complex Contracts Process and Administration (FCAS), to tackle financial risks in contract management.
Mrs Beatrice Jedy-Agba, the Solicitor-General of Nigeria and Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Justice, said FCAS is designed to enhance operational efficiency in ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs).
Jedy-Agba stated this at the 2023 Manual and Workshop Engagement with Legal Advisors and Key Stakeholders in Abuja.
The workshop was titled: “Strengthening Contract Management and Compliance in Federal Governance.”
She expressed concern over developmental challenges and lack of clarity arising from the contracts that government entered into despite having the Public Procurement Act, Fiscal Responsibility Act, among others.
The permanent secretary, who decried the ways and manners laws are being undermined in the country, said Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) are governed by law.
“You can not just do what you like. We expect that you have capacity, which should reflect in the quality of agreement you are bringing,” she said.
She added that legal advisors must do their best to avert failed contracts and also mitigate the effect.
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According to her, collaboration is key to ensure effective implementation of projects we deliver on behalf of the government.
A Deputy Director in the ministry, Mr Augustine Kalu, said that the new move was to guide the ministry and various departments on how to navigate the FCAS platform and get results.
According to him, one of its fundamental objectives is to ensure that project not needed is not embarked upon.
On implementation plans, Kalu said about 40 MDAs had been unbundled.
He assured that the government was very much interested in the process, assuring that it would not jettison the programme but carry it to a logical conclusion.
“We will look at the feasibility studies, Public Private Partnership arrangement, funding arrangement, due diligence, so that projects are not abandoned,” Kalu said.
The Chief Consultant to the ministry on FCAS, Dr Mark Igiehon, expressed government’s readiness to take action through the justice ministry so as to avert what happened in the case of Process & Industrial Developments (P&ID) Ltd contract.
According to him, government by the new plan would be able to enter into projects and contracts in a sophisticated way using specialists not only to minimise possibility of project failure, but also to be able to processed and record contracts in the most proper way.
“Government is now ready to take action on such high level, high valued and high risk projects so that in the future, we will have fewer contracts failure and would not have to pay huge sum of money on failed contracts,” Igiehon said.
