By Gift Chapi-Odekina, Abuja
The House of Representatives has passed for second reading a bill seeking to establish the National Independent Project and Monitoring Agency (NIPMA)—a body aimed at promoting transparency, accountability, and effective oversight of public projects in Nigeria.
The bill, sponsored by Hon. Chinedu Emeka Martins, is designed to ensure that federally funded projects are executed to standard, within budget, and within the stipulated timeframes.
Hon. Martins, while leading the debate on the general principles of the bill, lamented the persistent failure of capital projects across the country despite the National Assembly’s yearly appropriation of trillions of naira.
“Each year, the President presents an Appropriation Bill detailing capital expenditures running into trillions of naira. Yet, the reality is disheartening. We continue to see abandoned, substandard, and poorly executed projects by MDAs across the country,” he said.
He identified the lack of independent and credible monitoring systems as a major contributor to project failures, stressing that the same MDAs that award contracts are also responsible for supervising them—a system he described as “inherently defective.”
“You cannot be a judge in your own case,” Martins noted. “This self-supervision model breeds inefficiency, fosters compromise, and enables contractors to cut corners.”
According to him, the proposed NIPMA will be a statutory institution with a sole mandate to monitor, track, and report on the implementation status of all federally funded projects nationwide.
The agency, once established, will:
Provide independent oversight of project execution
Detect inflated project costs early and ensure value for money
Reduce the number of abandoned or substandard projects
Create employment for engineers, auditors, quantity surveyors, and data analysts
Stimulate local economies in project-hosting communities
Restore public trust in the government’s use of funds
Martins clarified that the agency would complement existing institutions like the Bureau of Public Procurement and the Office of the Auditor-General, by offering real-time, on-the-ground monitoring of capital projects.
“This bill is timely and necessary. With NIPMA, we can ensure that Nigeria’s resources genuinely serve its people,” he concluded, urging his colleagues to support its passage.
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