Federal Ministries of Education Compliance to Advertisement for Solicitation Of Bids Guidelines in the Public Procurement Act, 2007, Nigeria

Since the enactment of the Act in 2007, it has been observed that the public procurement implementation process is still faced with challenges in government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). The observation made by Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) through the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) in its Circular with reference: Ref.No.59858/S.11/VOL.II/332.It observed that publication for solicitation of bids in Federal Tender Journal and National Dallies by most MDAs of Federal Government exhibit poor compliance with the standard requirement for the solicitation of bids as stipulated in Section 16(6) of the Public Procurement Act, 2007. Based on these findings the study seeks to assess the extent of compliance, looking at the Federal Ministry of Education. The research adopted a descriptive survey method and used structured questionnaires and observation to collect the data for analysis. The data were collected from a sample of 400 respondents purposively drawn from the contractors, consultants and service providers of the Federal Ministry of Education Headquarters' projects, goods and services, staff of the BPP and Civil Society Organizations into procurement and budget monitoring in Nigeria. An analysis of the collected data revealed that the Federal Ministry of Education to large extent complied with maintaining of Notice Board for the public posting of procurement notices and solicitations, to a moderate extent complied with placing of advertisement in at least two National newspapers of general circulation and the Federal Tender's Journal the Request for Proposal (RFPs), to a large extent complied with placing advertisement on the BPP website the RFPs, but did not complied with placing advertisement on their official website the Request for Proposal (RFPs), and to a low extent complied with the required format of advertisements for solicitation of bids submi􀄴ed to the Editorial Board of the Federal Tender Journals. It recommended that the Federal Ministry of Education and other MDAs should build or rebuild its functional website to carry a webpage for its procurement ma􀄴ers and notices as required by the BPP Procurement Procedures and Manual and BBP should conduct a capacity training of its staff and staff of the Federal Ministry of Education and other MDAs on how draft RFPs following the guidelines provided by the BPP, among others.