The Sustainable Procurement, Environmental and Social Standards Enhancement Centre of Excellence (SPESSECE) at Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria has urged procurement, environmental and social standards professionals in the public and private sectors to participate in its programmes.
Speaking at its one-day Stakeholders’ Forum in Abuja recently, the Centre Leader, Professor Mohammed Bello Yunusa said the activities of the centre is principally that of capacity building in the three sectors of the economy: procurement, environment and social standards. The forum had in attendance representatives from many Federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies, professional organizations, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) among others based in Abuja.
According to Prof. Yunusa, the procurement sub-sector of the public sector in Nigeria needs a lot of capacity building. “This will enable them to put the processes of procurement in the context of environmental development and social development. In other words, procurement is not just procurement; procurement relates to environment and the communities,” he explained.
The Centre, which is supported by the World Bank and the National Universities Commission (NUC), runs short executive courses and advanced certificate courses in Procurement, Environmental Studies and Social Development as well as master’s programmes. “The programmes, particularly the short courses, have run in Zaria up till today but there are opportunities now to run it online or even in-house where you have adequate threshold number for us to come to your Ministry, Department and Agency to run it for you for few days,” the centre leader revealed.
Prof Yunusa said the centre was looking forward to coming over to Abuja and run the courses “for those who are here and create some learning centres. “We do not just want you to collaborate with us and participate in our training but we expect that in the long run, we will also be able to work with you on some other fronts. We should be able to bring our students for industrial experience as it is required in our training process. So, we want you to cultivate that relationship with us.”