The Network for the Actualisation of Social Growth and Viable Development (NEFGAD) has faulted a World Bank recommendation on the draft Public Procurement Bill 2023.

The World Bank recommended the stripping of the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) from its regulatory power of issuing certificates of "No Objection" to contracts.

The bank termed the exercise as operational and not regulatory, hence recommended it to be transferred to Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).

However, NEFGAD in a six-point position paper presented to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and copied other relevant institutions on Wednesday and signed by its head of office, Mr Akingunola Omoniyi warned the federal government against bowing to external pressure capable of undermining and derailing the successes recorded by the Public Procurement Act implementation in the last 17 years.

The organisation in the paper titled: "Harmonised National Procurement Stakeholders and Citizens' Positions on Draft Public Procurement Bill 2023", said, "A peer review and fitness test conducted on various comments and recommendations, particularly from the World Bank against other country's public procurement regulations across the globe, suggests that they are merely hypothetical without detail consideration of the country's peculiar challenges and yearnings of the people, hence the need to be mindful in order not to allow the country to be used as testing ground for regulations capable of disrupting smooth operations of the country's public procurement system."