As a Federal Cabinet Member, Ndubuisi Ekekwe Will Automate Out Procurement Corruption in Nigeria

Good People, the big boys are hitting the cities, communities and state houses, making their cases on why Nigerians should hire them as the next President. In my small domain, I am making a case for my candidacy into a federal cabinet.  Drawing from my “3T2030 Plan for Nigeria” – a plan designed to push the GDP of Nigeria from the current sub-$500b to $3trillion by 2030, I present how, as a federal minister, will work with Mr. President, to fight procurement corruption in Nigeria. We will automate out corruption, by building hardened and resilient public institutions.

If the tech guys in the ministries cannot execute, I will ask Mr. President for two weeks to build the stacks and deploy them myself by asking young Nigerians to come for a hackathon with the Honourable minister. We will provide zobo, nkwobi, amala with RSVP (rice and stew very plenty!); here we go.

Number 1:  New Vision for EFCC/ICPC to Focus More On Prevention than Prosecution

I will seek for new KPIs (key performance indicators) to be developed for EFCC/ICPC. I will push for it to spend more resources to build resilient institutions where corruption would be harder than simply and mainly focusing on fighting and prosecuting corruption. We will reform the operations, focusing on how it helps to prevent corruption rather than how many corruption cases it tries and wins. In other words, at the end of any operating year, EFCC/ICPC must explain what it has done in the nation to make it harder for corruption to take place. And those things must be institutionalized.

Will get them to  focus more on preventing corruption than merely fighting and prosecuting it. New KPIs will be developed to ensure they work to PREVENT than just PROSECUTE.

Number 2: Track All Payments of N10million and Above

We will build a corruption-free nation where it would be extremely impossible to perpetuate procurement-based corruption because technology will make things obviously transparent. All government systems must be structured to be corruption-resilient so that people that want to perpetuate corruption will fail. We will publish any government expense that is more than N10 million, quarterly, in a web diary which all citizens will have access to. This applies to all levels in the federal government, from ministries to agencies. For national security reasons, a segment will be available to the accredited civil society and press team.  They will be directions to avoid invoice splitting.

Number 3:  Eliminate or Reduce Procurement Fraud to Near-Zero

(Small section from 3T2030 Document)

Brief: Big data analytics is a special area of computer science that uses high-level mathematical models to provide patterns or trends out of large datasets. Corruption can be drastically reduced in Nigeria through pattern matching and analytics. 

The Idea: Analytics is used to track payment patterns and ascertain procurement integrity.  The idea is to deploy analytic tools to help find inflated or fraudulent procurements made by federal agencies/workers. At the moment, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) pays most federal contractors directly after the specific agency has certified work completion. We will put these contracts in a database and then query them to discover patterns in costs and other parameters. CBN has these documents, they will be scanned and dumped into a server for machine vision.

At the ICPC/EFCC/(or a special unit in the Presidency), our technology will query those documents tracking historical and present costs to see patterns. When too much deviation occurs, the watchdog (for example EFCC)  will get an alert via email. The watchdog will then examine the alert and see if there is need for further investigation.

For example, if Agency A buys a Toyota Camry for N10 million and Agency B plans to buy the same car for N18 million within the same month and city, the system will flag Agency B. The EFCC would like to know if there is fraud or simply the Director General is not a good bargainer when paying for things. Where necessary, the EFCC may recommend training on procurement systems for Agency B. More so, EFCC will have new power with CBN to offer for the contractor which supplied Agency A to supply Agency B. If that happens, the car is purchased and Agency B will still have N8 million to do other things in its bank account.

(CBN makes payments to all federal contractors; we will scan all contract documents and use machine vision to check deviations to mean. Where threshold is exceeded, EFCC will be alerted before payment)

There will be no purchase over an agreed price range, say N2m that will not be tracked. This will become a policing system that puts pressure on agencies of governments to cut costs. The system will also recommend standardizations on RFP and other items so that algorithmic comparisons can be effective.

We think this will help “police” the system and help reduce corruption. The goal is to have a real-time system that looks at every expense in government and determines if the government is getting value for the money spent. As the database matures, the government can decide that any planned purchase outside a certain deviation within a mean amount should be declined. 

And where possible, the watchdog can offer the purchasing officer to use another contractor that will provide the same services at a better price based on historical data in the database.

Number 4 and more: (will share more from the plan with His Excellency)

Comment on Social Media Feed

Comment (edited(: The Cabals controlling Nigeria won’t give room for this.

My Response: Do not lose confidence in yourself and your nation. The reason corruption thrives in Nigeria is that the system talks with people, and is designed around humans. If you use technology which cannot be negotiated with, everything will fall in line. Do you know that we can build a procurement regime which will be human agnostic eliminating most elements of corruption?

 I do not need to talk to a DG but the tech will do it. Either he adheres to the process or he cannot progress. So, I do not care if the DG or agency agrees, provided Mr President has approved it, they will be left to deal with technology systems and not Ndubuisi.

Yes, for that payment to be made to the contractor, upload the contract documents to CBN server where AI will scan it for compliance. If you do not do it, your agency contractor will not be paid!

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