The colossal wastages in public finance via public procurement that was deeply entrenched in the State procurement space informed the decision of the Executive Governor of Rivers State in 2008, to enact the Public Procurement Law No. 4 of 2008. The Law was enacted to sanitize the entire public procurement space and bring in fiscal responsibility.

The Law established the Rivers State Bureau on Public Procurement to effectively drive its implementation and made the Bureau a regulatory authority responsible for the monitoring and exercise of over-sight functions on public procurement and to harmonize the existing policies and practices as well as developing a legal framework and professional capacity for public procurement in the State.

It is interesting to note that subsequent to the operation of the Law, the wastages in public finance through procurement has drastically reduced gradually restoring sanity to the procurement space in the State. This has been made possible through the unrelenting efforts of the present administration under the able leadership of the Acting Director General of the Bureau, Mr. Igonibo Emmanuel Thompson, with the strong support of the current Executive Governor, His Excellency, Chief (Barrister) E. N Wike, CON, GSSRS.

With the milestone already achieved, it is our firm belief that we need to do more work in order to actualize the mandate of the Bureau by entrenching a sound public procurement culture in the State. It is on this premises that we solicit the support of every stakeholder to join hands with us in fulfilling the spirit of the Public Procurement Law.