PUBLIC PROCUREMENT POLICY AS A TOOL FOR ALLEVIATING SOCIO-ECONOMIC DISPARITIES: LESSONS FOR NIGERIA

Abstract

The public procurement systems and practices in most countries, especially developing
nations, majorly focus on solving infrastructures problems and acquiring services and goods
or items necessary for developmental purposes and the day-day running of state affairs.
Against this conventional notion, however, this paper demonstrates the applicability of
public procurement to addressing other important societal concerns. Specifically, the paper
explores the usefulness of public procurement as a veritable tool for alleviating
socioeconomic disparities among groups and categories of people in the society. It concludes
by arguing that, following the examples of other countries, Nigeria could maximize her
public procurement power to accomplish similar goals through a review and amendment of
the country's 1999 Constitutional and the Public Procurement Act of 2007, to bring to bear the
socioeconomic realities of the country in her public procurement practice and system. The
paper is basically a theoretical and qualitative research. Data for the study were derived
mainly from secondary sources, and the descriptive method of qualitative analysis was
employed to analyze the data.