TETFund seeks termination, sanction of erring contractors

The Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund, (TETFund), Arc Sonny Echono, has recommended termination of contracts and sanctions for erring contractors handling projects in institutions benefiting from its various interventions.

Echono, stated this in Abuja on Saturday, at the 2021 Annual General Meeting of the Procurement Professionals Association of Nigeria,( PPAN), which also featured election into its executive positions.

Exchono, who acknowledged that there were challenges of high cost of materials in the last one year, said the fund had been coping with the situation as it has designed ways of responding to it.

He said: “We would be working closely with the regulatory authorities to see how we can get support for this and ensure that we don’t have abandoned projects because ultimately, it is better to solve the problem today; the more you delay, the more the cost will increase and the greater the complications will be.”

The fund, he said is working in a very nimble manner and working with the contractors and institutions.

“Some of them where the fault is that of the contractor, we are not only recommending terminations, we are also recommending sanctions. But there are other areas where the fault is basically what you call force major, it’s external to everybody,” he said.

Speaking on tackling corruption in procurement, he described corruption as one of the manifestations or incentives for mis-procurement, adding that a good procurement is the one that delivers on the objective especially of the procurement at the right time and at the right cost to the satisfaction of all.

“Procurement is the major source of pecuniary gain because more often than not the contract system has become so endemic and embedded in our system that people also see it as a main source of unearned incomes.”

“So, what we need to do is to professionalise the sector and ensure that those who carry out those activities are trained to do so. We need to reinforce the system, our checks, the regulatory functions, the role of all our anticorruption agencies should be more preventive,” he said.