Awareness and Readiness of Public Procurement officers on Sustainability in North Eastern Nigeria

Abstract

There is a growing trend worldwide, primarily developed and some developing countries, of the public sector moving from conventional procurement system towards the more sustainable and environmental-friendly approach. The need to consider economic, environmental as well as social aspects of projects before embarking on it yield enormous benefits to the present and future generations. This study seeks to assess the level of awareness and readiness of public procurement experts on Sustainability in north-eastern Nigeria. The study targeted procurements experts in Bauchi and Gombe state working at Due-process unit, a focal point that ensures efficiency, transparency and effectiveness in all procurements (goods and services), and issue certificate of compliance to across the state. A total of seventy-three (73) questionnaire forms were administered to the respondents to rank, based on their experience, social, economic and environmental factors in a Linkert-like scale of five-point. Fifty-three (53) questionnaires were returned, and Cross-tabulation was used to compare the respondents' background information, which shows that most of those with training on Sustainability are engineers with a bachelor's degree. Descriptive statistics and Friedman's ANOVA were used to, which ranked gender, race, religious discrimination, the factor with highest mean score thus ranked first, while Similar working experience, lowest responsive tender and excellent workmanship were ranked second, third and fourth respectively. Friedman's ANOVA with the stepwise step-down comparison, with a significant factor of 0.05, ranked using energy saver appliance and fair working condition as the most significant factors. The study recommends that other geopolitical zones of the country should also embark on the same study.