Opening Speech

Honourable Ministers, Honourable governors, distinguished guests, colleagues, workshop participants, ladies and gentlemen, Good morning!

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It is with great honor and great pleasure that I welcome you to the annual Federal Ministry of Finance Workshop on Projects Implementation conducted by the African Development Bank's Development Institute here in Abuja. We are delighted to have you here to participate and share in the workshop. We have many representatives from all over Nigeria which shows how important the workshop is. Thank you for making the sacrifice.

I would like personally, and on behalf of the President of Nigeria, the Finance Ministry and the government in general to thank the African Development Bank for organizing this workshop. The government and the African Development Bank have had a good working relationship over a long period of time. I would like to thank you for everything you do for the development of projects in Nigeria and Africa at large, and we are grateful and proud of this partnership.

I would like to recognize all the members present including; project coordinators, project accountants, procurement officers, legal officers and information technology officers, who took their time to attend this conference. Also, country managers, country economists, country program officers, disbursement officers, and their assistants. I think everyone in my ministry is here. Please remember that you are here on a fact-finding mission and I expect you to spread this gospel when you go back to your workstations. Don t think at any moment that you are on holiday.

I readily accepted the call to come and be part of this great workshop because it is important in that it will assist in the management of programs and funded projects in Nigeria. It is clear that corruption is dogging our continent. Nigeria, in particular, has been losing a lot of money because of poor management and implementation of projects which opens the door for unscrupulous individuals to take advantage and loot public fund. The workshop aims at familiarizing government officials with the execution and implementation agencies with emphasis on government policies and procedures. These will enable them to promote proper project implementation and management effectively.

The workshop aims to; create ample for knowledge and skill acquisition to effectively manage Bank-financed projects, develop problem-solving tools for fiduciary issues in project implementation, create platforms for knowledge and experience sharing on emerging development issues, to train trainers capable of training others on issues they have learnt, and provide management skills that can affect project outcomes.

The African Development Institute is the capacity development focal point of the bank. There is a huge demand at the bank level as well as the Regional Member Countries (RMCs); these have caused a huge challenge to capacity development. The African Development Bank has five goals that it wants to achieve in Africa. These include: lighting up, feeding, industrializing, integrating, and improving the quality of life for the poor people of Africa. To fully implement these goals, there is a need for capacity development activities including skills, attitudes, competencies, policies, and services, to provide to government institutions and bank individuals and regional member country members. The workshop aims at providing the capacity to project implementation units in regional member countries to realize the high five goals of the bank fully.

Project implementation bottlenecks have been the reason for poor performance of bank funded operations. The bottlenecks are in the procurement, contract management, and financial management within the project implementation units and the bank.

The African Development Bank 2016 Development and Business Delivery Model has recently been approved. Many regional management countries used the business as usual approach prior to the model's implementation. It is, therefore, important for project staff to undergo training and retraining to meet the bank's expectations. It is necessary to urgently enhance skills in procurement, disbursement, financial management, contract management, and knowledge management in the workshop.

At the end of the workshop, the participants are expected to poses enhanced knowledge, skills, orientation, and confidence. These will enable them to contextualize the bank's project cycle management and situations challenging respective regions, manage procurement processes, manage economic operator contracts, implement bank's financial management policies, plan and deliver training sessions, champion innovations in implementation and management of projects, integrate data and knowledge products in project implementation, and form the foundation for online practice to share and exchange knowledge and skills on fragility and resilient issues.

The workshop will involve trainers from the bank through consultation with other agencies if and when necessary. It is worthy to understand that this is not the first workshop organized for project implementation. What has been achieved by these workshops is yet to be recognized especially considering the fact that there is need to conduct follow up workshops. I would like to urge the participants to effectively use this opportunity to help enhance the work of the government towards providing the public the best service through project implementations. Ensure that all you learn will be seen as soon as you get back to your workstations.

It is my pleasure to declare the 2018 Workshop on Project Implementation open.

I wish you fruitful deliberations.

Thank you for your attention