“I was fighting fireworks for 9 years. The day I left, the fireworks stopped.”
That’s how former Bureau of Public Procurement DG Emeka Eze summed up his tenure at the inaugural “Procurement Evolution” event in Abuja last Thursday.
Eze, who ran the BPP from 2007 to February 2016 and now chairs the FCT Civil Service Commission, said the petitions against him weren’t about performance. They were about money.
–“I blocked them from chopping”—
“For nine years there were petitions flying everywhere. Fireworks everywhere,” he told the audience. “But after I left, for another eight years, no petitions, no fireworks.”
The pattern, he said, restarted when current DG Adebowale Adedokun resumed office.
“Recently I met one of those behind the petitions. I asked why he stopped making noise after I left. He said, ‘You blocked us from chopping’.”
In Nigerian slang, “chopping” means illicitly benefiting from public funds. Eze’s message: strict enforcement of procurement rules directly threatens those who profit from loopholes.
–“Make June 4 National Procurement Day”–
Eze urged President Bola Tinubu to designate June 4 as National Procurement Day. That’s the day BPP was established in 2007. He said an annual review would let federal and state stakeholders assess public spending and fix weak spots.
BPP DG Adedokun backed the call, praising past leaders for creating the Budget Monitoring and Price Intelligence Unit in 2001 and later BPP. He said procurement isn’t just paperwork.
“Procurement is a potent, unifying tool for our collective national development. It drives economic transformation, industrial development, innovation, and institutional accountability,” Adedokun said.
Since the 2007 Public Procurement Act, he noted, successive BPP teams have strengthened transparency despite implementation challenges.
—The bottom line—
Eze’s testimony is blunt: when procurement rules are enforced, corrupt actors fight back. When they’re relaxed, the “fireworks” stop.
His story adds weight to the debate on whether Nigeria’s anti-corruption institutions are working — or only working until the enforcer leaves the room.
