How local contracts are awarded without public notice

Over four months, we requested and reviewed tender records from three local government areas in southwest Nigeria. What we found was not a single dramatic breach so much as a quiet, repeated pattern: contracts above the threshold that should trigger open advertisement were instead awarded through a shorter, less visible process.

In each of the three areas, the public notice board — the traditional means of advertising a tender — carried far fewer notices than the number of contracts actually signed that year. Vendor lists obtained through the register show a small, recurring group of companies receiving the bulk of the awarded work.

What the records show

Contract registers list award dates, vendor names, and sums, but rarely the method of solicitation used to reach that vendor. Where we could cross-reference against internal minutes, the pattern held: roughly two in three contracts above the open-tender threshold appear to have skipped public advertisement altogether.

"We publish what we're required to publish. Whether that's enough is a fair question to ask the ministry, not us," one procurement officer told us, speaking on condition their name not be used in this passage.

That distinction — what's required versus what's sufficient — sits at the center of this report. Nigerian procurement guidance sets thresholds for open competitive bidding, but enforcement and disclosure practice vary considerably between local government areas, and there is no single public register that lets a resident check all three at once.

What we asked for, and what came back

We submitted formal requests for the full 2024–2025 contract registers to each of the three local government secretariats. Two responded within six weeks with partial records; the third has not yet responded to our second follow-up. Details of exactly what was requested, received, and declined are recorded in the document register accompanying this report, available to Report Access and Analyst subscribers.

None of this proves wrongdoing on its own. It does suggest that the public's ability to check how these contracts are awarded is thinner than the rules imply, and that closing that gap would take fairly modest changes to how registers are published.