Re-Valuing and Re-Engineering Nigeria’s Procurement Reform: Integrating Professional Regulation with Public Procurement Governance

Olanrewaju O. Ogunmilua (PhD)

Nigeria’s public procurement reform has reached a turning point. Nearly two decades after the Public
Procurement Act 2007 established a stronger regulatory framework for Federal contracting, the question
before government is no longer simply how to regulate procurement procedures. It is how to build the
professional competence, institutional capacity and strategic leadership required to convert public
expenditure into measurable national development.

The Circular on the Professionalisation of the Procurement Cadre in the Federal Public Service, issued by the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation on 26 August 2026, opens
the way for that work. It approves the National Public Procurement Certification Programme (NPPCP), administered by the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), as the mandatory certification for officers in the Procurement Cadre, and seeks to establish a common competency standard covering procurement planning and procedures, public procurement law, contract management, ethics, compliance, accountability and value for money.

This is a significant development, and it should open a wider conversation: how can Nigeria connect the regulatory responsibilities of the BPP with the broader professional development
ecosystem of purchasing, procurement and supply management? The answer should not be institutional rivalry or duplication. It should be integration, complementarity and clearly
delineated responsibilities.

The distinction between the mandate of BPP vs that of CIPSMN
One qualification is necessary before the argument proceeds. The relationship between the two institutions is presently the subject of proceedings before the Federal High Court, Abuja Judicial Division, in a suit instituted by the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply Management of Nigeria (CIPSMN), against the Bureau and the Attorney-General of the Federation. Nothing offered here is a comment on the merits of that suit, which is for the court alone to determine. What follows is an argument about what the two
enabling statutes say and about the policy architecture Nigeria ought to build around them.

The Public Procurement Act 2007 establishes the BPP as the institution responsible for regulating and
supervising Nigeria’s public procurement system, and the long title of the Act is instructive on the point at issue. The Act was made, inter alia, for “developing the legal framework and professional capacity for public procurement in Nigeria.” Professional capacity is thus not incidental to the Bureau’s remit; it
appears in the statement of what the statute exists to do. Section 4(d) carries the point into the Bureau’s objectives, which include the attainment of professionalism in the public sector procurement system.

Section 5(k) then requires the Bureau to “organize training and development programmes for procurement
professionals,” while section 5(s) requires it to “co-ordinate relevant training programs to build
institutional capacity.” Section 6(1)(m) empowers the Bureau to do such other things as are necessary for
the efficient performance of its functions under the Act. Read together, these provisions supply a substantial statutory foundation for the Bureau to establish, coordinate and administer a certification
programme designed around the competencies required to operate within the Federal public procurement system.

Under the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply Management of Nigeria (Establishment) Act 2007, the Institute is charged with determining and reviewing the academic standards, knowledge and skills to be attained by persons seeking to qualify as registered members; with ensuring that its members maintain professional standards; and with providing training, education and examination for persons seeking to become professional procurers. Its professional jurisdiction, as the Act itself frames it, encompasses
purchasing, procurement, stores, materials, warehousing, logistics management and supply chain management. That is a wide field. It is also a materially different field from the specialised administration of Federal public expenditure.

One provision requires direct treatment rather than avoidance. Section 11(9) of the CIPSMN Act provides that a person shall not be entitled to be appointed or engaged to head the purchasing and supply chain management of any organisation unless duly registered as a member of the Institute qualified by
examination. That is the strongest textual anchor for the Institute’s position, and an intervention passing over it in silence would not be worth reading.

Two observations may nevertheless be made. The provision speaks to who may head a purchasing and supply function; it does not, on its face, address the competency standards a regulator may set for officers administering public funds under a separate statute. And the Public Procurement Act commenced on 4 June 2007, some five weeks after the CIPSMN Act, so the ordinary canons governing two statutes of the same year whose provisions appear to overlap are engaged.

How those canons apply is for the court. As a matter of policy, the two mandates are far more easily read as complementary than as mutually exclusive.

CIPSMN should therefore be understood principally as a professional regulatory and development institution for purchasing and supply management practitioners, whereas the BPP carries a
specific statutory responsibility for the public procurement system and the institutional capacity required to operate that system. This distinction is fundamental. Public Procurement is not merely Purchasing and Supply Management Public procurement and private-sector procurement share important professional foundations, but they are not institutionally identical. Private-sector purchasing and supply management is concerned
predominantly with commercial performance: strategic sourcing, supplier relationships, logistics, inventory, cost optimisation, supply-chain resilience and, ultimately, organisational competitiveness.

Public procurement must incorporate many of those same commercial competencies while operating within an additional framework of public law, constitutional accountability, appropriation, administrative procedure, transparency, competition, due process, audit, public expenditure management and socioeconomic policy. The difference is not merely one of degree.

An officer administering public funds must consequently understand considerably more than purchasing
technique: the Public Procurement Act, the regulations and thresholds, budgetary processes, tendering and
evaluation procedures, contract administration, complaints and review mechanisms, debarment, audit,
transparency obligations and the public-policy objectives attached to government expenditure. This is the intellectual and institutional justification for a specialised public procurement certification
programme administered by the regulator of the public procurement system itself.

The Next Phase of Procurement Reform
The first generation of Nigeria’s procurement reform concentrated on legislation, due process, competition
and institutional oversight. The second is concerned with professional capability and strategicprocurement — with whether the officers making procurement decisions are equipped to make good ones. The Circular recognises this by placing competency development at the centre of the Procurement
Cadre, requiring officers across Ministries, Extra-Ministerial Departments and Agencies to obtain the level of NPPCP certification corresponding to their grade and function. This creates an opening to re-engineer the professional architecture rather than merely to add another certificate to a file.

A sustainable reform model should recognise that public procurement regulation and procurement professional development are related but distinct functions. The policy objective
should not be to transfer the Bureau’s statutory or Circular-assigned responsibilities elsewhere, nor to
create parallel certification regimes within the Federal Public Service. Government should instead develop
a framework in which the BPP remains the authoritative public procurement regulator and administrator of the NPPCP, while the Chartered Institute contributes complementary professional
knowledge, continuing development, research and exposure to modern purchasing and supplymanagement practice. In plain terms: the BPP should safeguard the public procurement system; the professional institute should help deepen the profession that supports it.

The NPPCP Should remain the Common Public-Service Standard
The Circular is clear that the NPPCP is the mandatory certification for Procurement Cadre officers and that
the Bureau administers it. Any future collaboration must preserve that clarity, since competing mandatory
certifications would fragment the reform and leave officers uncertain which standard governs their careers.
The NPPCP should remain the common government competency standard, while recognised professional qualifications and memberships complement it through continuing education and specialised development.

The Circular already supplies the conceptual bridge for this approach. It provides that NPPCP certification
is to complement rather than replace academic and other professional qualifications prescribed under the applicable Schemes of Service. That provision recognises that a procurement officer may hold valuable academic and professional qualifications while still requiring a common governmentspecific certification appropriate to the responsibilities of public office. The open question, and it is a fair one, is what weight professional membership should carry in progression within the cadre.

That question is answerable through the Scheme of Service. It does not require litigation to settle.

 

Professionalisation must reflect the Distinct Character of Public Procurement
My own professional and academic path has reinforced a conviction that professionalisation must be
approached as more than certification or periodic training. Studying logistics and supply chain management at Cranfield University and public procurement law and policy at the University of
Nottingham made the distinction between procurement in the private sector and procurement within
government considerably clearer to me.

Both share fundamental principles — value for money, strategic
sourcing, supplier management, negotiation, risk management and supply-chain efficiency — but their
objectives and operating environments diverge sharply. Private-sector procurement is driven by
competitiveness, profitability, resilience and shareholder value. Public procurement must reconcile
economic efficiency with legislation, transparency, fairness, competition, accountability and the developmental objectives of government.

That distinction was equally evident in the structure of the two curricula. The study of procurement cannot
be reduced to the teaching of procedures; a well-designed development system must expose practitioners
to the disciplines that shape procurement decisions: procurement law, economics, strategic
sourcing, supply-chain management, contract management, sustainability, digital
procurement, competition, public policy, ethics and risk management. Something else
mattered as much as the curriculum. Learning under scholars of the standing of Professor Martin
Christopher, Emeritus Professor of Marketing and Logistics at Cranfield, and Professor Sue Arrowsmith,
Professor Emerita of Public Procurement Law and Policy at Nottingham and founding editor of the Public
Procurement Law Review, shows what becomes obtainable when professional education is joined to deep
sector expertise and rigorous research. Professionalisation should not become certification for
certification’s sake. It should produce officers who understand not merely how to comply with procurement
rules, but why procurement decisions matter to the economy and how they can advance national policy.
This becomes particularly important under the Renewed Hope Nigeria First Policy approved by the
Federal Executive Council in May 2025. An officer implementing that policy requires capabilities well
beyond tender administration: domestic supply chains, market structures, local-content development,
lifecycle costing, industrial capacity and supplier development. Nigeria requires, in short, procurement
professionals capable of combining commercial intelligence with public accountability.
The programme therefore presents an opportunity to build a distinctly Nigerian public procurement
curriculum, benchmarked against international practice but designed around Nigeria’s development
priorities. The Bureau should consider assembling a structured faculty drawn from academics,
procurement lawyers, economists, engineers, quantity surveyors, supply-chain specialists and seasoned
practitioners, serving and retired. Officers responsible for infrastructure, health, ICT, defence, agriculture
and energy procurement could then acquire sector-specific competencies progressively rather than being
treated as interchangeable administrators. The objective is to transform the Nigerian procurement officer from a processor of documentation into a strategic commercial and public-policy professional.

A BPP–Professional Institute Procurement Academy
One practical approach worth considering is a collaborative Public Procurement Professional
Development Academy or Centre of Excellence. This would neither replace the NPPCP nor diminish
the Bureau’s regulatory authority. It would be a platform through which the Bureau, professional bodies
and universities provide structured continuing development committed to public sector procurement. The
statutory basis already exists: section 6(3)(c) of the Public Procurement Act empowers the Bureau, subject
to the approval of the Council, to liaise with relevant bodies or institutions, national and international, for
the effective performance of its functions. Collaboration of this kind is contemplated by the Act, not merely
tolerated by it. The Bureau would determine competency requirements and regulatory content, while
professional and academic partners contribute expertise in supply-chain management, commercial
strategy, research and executive education. Such a model would help Nigeria build its own procurement
knowledge base rather than depending on imported programmes, and would position the country as a
regional centre of excellence for public procurement professionalisation in Africa.
The Twelve-Month Moratorium Is an Opportunity
The implementation timetable contained in the Circular makes this conversation urgent. Serving
Procurement Cadre officers have been granted a twelve-month moratorium within which to obtain the
relevant NPPCP certification. During the transition they must provide verifiable evidence of enrolment and
satisfactory progress, and the certification becomes a requirement for deployment to Cadre positions
thereafter. This should not become a hurried certification exercise. Nigeria should use the period to conduct comprehensive procurement competency audit across MDAs, establishing what officers know,
where the gaps sit by sector and grade, and what the curriculum must therefore contain. A moratorium
spent counting certificates would be a moratorium wasted.
Establishing a National Procurement Professional Council
As the reform matures, government may also consider a standing institutional platform bringing together
the Bureau, the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, relevant professional bodies,
academia and selected public and private-sector procurement leaders — a National Procurement
Professional Council or Advisory Forum. Its role would not be to interfere with the Bureau’s
statutory responsibilities, but to advise on competency development, research priorities, continuing
education, professional ethics and alignment between government procurement skills and the wider
economy — a continuous feedback mechanism between regulation, professional practice and the
marketplace. Worthy of note is that the Act already contemplates professional representation at the apex
of the system: section 1(2)(f) provides for part-time members of the National Council on Public
Procurement representing, inter alia, the purchasing and supply management profession, the Nigerian Bar
Association, NACCIMA and the Nigerian Society of Engineers. The architecture of cooperation was
envisaged from the outset. Giving it practical effect is the outstanding task.
The BPP Must Remain the Institutional Anchor
Integration must nevertheless be carefully designed. The Circular assigns substantial responsibilities to the
Bureau: in consultation with the Office of the Head of the Civil Service, it is to provide technical guidance
on the NPPCP, including curriculum, certification levels, eligibility, examination and assessment
arrangements, competency areas and implementation frameworks. That mandate should remain
unambiguous. Collaboration should strengthen the Bureau rather than create parallel authority, and the
Bureau should become the institutional anchor around which Nigeria’s public procurement
professionalisation ecosystem is organised.
The scale of what is now being asked of the Bureau carries a corresponding obligation on government to
strengthen the institution itself. A regulator expected to professionalise an entire federal cadre, implement
digital procurement, provide price and market intelligence, enforce procurement standards and support
strategic national purchasing requires adequate funding, technology and highly skilled personnel. Nigeria
cannot build a world-class procurement profession around a weak procurement institution.
One Profession, Complementary Institutions, One National Objective
The professionalisation Circular gives Nigeria an opportunity to avoid institutional fragmentation and
build something considerably more ambitious: one coherent procurement profession supported
by complementary institutions. The Bureau administers the mandatory competency framework; the
professional institute supports continuing development, specialist expertise, research and ethics; the Office
of the Head of the Civil Service reflects those competencies in progression and deployment; universities
and MDAs supply research and practical learning environments. Working together, these institutions could
create a procurement profession equal to Nigeria’s economic ambitions. Working against one another, they
will produce litigation.
Conclusion: Re-Valuing the Profession, Re-Engineering the System
Nigeria’s procurement reform began with a question about integrity: how can government make public contracting more transparent and accountable? Almost two decades later, the country must ask a more ambitious one: how can Nigeria use procurement strategically to obtain better value from public expenditure and advance national development? Part of the answer lies in professionalisation. On that reading, the Circular of 26 August 2026 is not an instruction to obtain another certificate. It can become the foundation of a re-engineering of the profession, bringing the regulatory strength of the Bureau and the capacity-development potential of the purchasing and supply-management profession within one framework that respects the statutory responsibilities of each.

The objective should not be competition over who controls procurement professionalism. It must be
competence, integrity, value for money and national development. Properly implemented, the initiative could mark the transition from a first generation of reform centred on rules, procedures and compliance to a second centred on professional competence, technology, market intelligence, strategic sourcing and economic value. From the foregoing, it is evident that the choice before these institutions is not, in the end, only a legal one. It is a choice about whether they will spend the coming decade defining their boundaries against each other or building capability together. The overall vision should be to Re-value the procurement professional. Strengthen the BPP. Integrate
professional expertise. Digitise the system and convert public procurement from an administrative process into a strategic instrument of Nigeria’s economic development.

Finally, the BPP should not throw away the baby and the bathwater being the mother of the
profession.

An advisory note by Olanrewaju O. Ogunmilua (PhD), is a Procurement Expert based in Nigeria 
Ogunmiluao@gmail.com