The Ekimogun Roundtable, a socioeconomic group of Ondo indigenes both at home and in the Diaspora, has sued the Border Community Development Agency (BCDA), a federal government establishment, over what it called a breach of procurement regulations in the process for the award of a contract for the empowerment of Yaba youth and women in Ondo West Local Government Area of Ondo State.
The group, in suit number FHC/ABJ/CS/1788/2024, filed at the Federal High Court, Abuja, before Honorable Justice Obiora A. Egwuatu, is seeking the court’s declaration that the Border Community Development Agency has breached the provisions of Section 18(a) of the Public Procurement Act 2007, which provides that a needs assessment and evaluation must be carried out before executing any empowerment project/public contract to pave the way for proper community engagement and prevent corruption, waste, and misapplication of public funds.
The group further averred that the BCDA has also breached Section 16(1d) of the Public Procurement Act 2007, which provides that all public procurement shall be conducted in a manner that is transparent, timely, and equitable to ensure accountability and conformity with the Public Procurement Act and regulations deriving therefrom. It stated that the Border Community Development Agency cannot prerogatively conjure any empowerment item through any means other than the procedure of law, which includes a needs assessment and evaluation of the empowerment beneficiaries.
It further argued, through its counsel N.D. Abdulsallam, Esq., who is leading eight other lawyers in the suit, that “it is very glaring from the totality of facts as contained in its affidavit in support of claims that the members of the applicant’s association and the entire women and youth of Yaba community are adults and natural beings who are breadwinners of their respective families and decision-makers in their own right, with peculiar and pressing economic needs. It is in the urgency to attend to their respective and pressing needs that the federal government of Nigeria set aside the budget line item code-named ‘the empowerment of women and youth of Yaba community, Ondo West.’ Hence, for a procuring entity that enjoys a mere domiciliary status over such a budget-line item to go on frolics of its own without engaging the people of the community whom such an empowerment scheme/contract is meant to serve is highly reprehensible.”
“The actual needs, wants, aspirations, yearnings, and priorities of the Yaba youth will be greatly affected and jeopardized if the respondent refuses to carry out the mandatory needs assessment and evaluation of the people of Yaba community before the commencement of the empowerment program. It is only through this needs assessment and evaluation that the empowerment beneficiaries can be duly and sustainably empowered.”
The group is seeking an order of the court to compel the BCDA to engage the Yaba youth, who are the beneficiaries of the empowerment scheme/contract, to ensure that their needs are assessed in order to fulfill the objectives of the empowerment scheme/contract. The matter is slated for hearing on the 3rd of March, 2025.
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