The federal government has ordered Ministries, Departments and Agencies, (MDAs) to stop immediately the practice of registering contractors and other service providers before such contractors could secure contracts from them.  MDAs, until now, have cultivated the culture of ripping off contractors and other service providers by insisting that such contractors must register with them with a specified amount of money before doing business with them.  Engineer Emeka Ezeh, director general of the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), who disclosed this while speaking at the opening of a workshop for building and civil engineering contractors on the classification and categorisation of contractors in Abuja, explained that the government has put in place a unified registration of contractors and service providers.
Ezeh noted that the move by government would put an end to the issue of multiple registrations in each of these MDAs. He described as illegal any further registration with MDAs and urged that any erring MDAs which insisted on registering contractors and service providers before giving them contracts should be reported to the appropriate authorities.
He said the decision of the BPP to take over the registration of contractors and all service providers was part of its statutory responsibilities as enshrined in section 3(h) of the Public Procurement Act 2007 which expects the bureau to maintain a national database of the particulars of federal contractors and service providers for ease of information sourcing and analysis and in conformity with the needs of the new information age. 
According to him,  the centralised data base and categorisation of contractors doing business with the federal government was also anticipated to enhance efficiency, save cost in public procurement, improve budget implementation and increase professionalism, besides initiating transparency in the public procurement process.
“Its advantages should not be lost in our system and it is our fervent hope that when the programme is completed, the cost of doing business in Nigeria would reduce through the elimination of multiple registration and pre-qualifications in the various MDAs,” he said.
Ezeh also noted that the quality of prequalification and the tendering process would increase at the end of the day coupled with the better grouping of contractors, consultants and service providers of equal competence and capabilities.  
He expressed the hope that with the classification of contractors and consultants by the BPP, there would be increased discipline in the federal procurement processes coupled with the fact that only capable and competent contractors and service providers would become identifiable and considered for deserving jobs.  Though the BPP would now take over the registration of contractors and other service providers, Ezeh said the affected companies would still have to register their companies and business concerns with the Corporate Affairs Commission as “the BPP is not out to take over the functions of CAC in the areas of companies and business names registration.”
Professor Nwanze Okidegbo chief economic adviser to the president, disclosed that effective implementation of programmes of due diligence and optimum impact starts with efficient procurement process, stressing that the implementation of the Act, as a key programme in the execution of the Public Procurement reform was not just significant to ensuring transparency and competition but to eliminate vices like corruption, nepotism and favouritism in the public contracting process.