The Project Fiduciary Management Unit (PFMU) is a unit within the Ministry of Finance, which is charged with the responsibility for managing fiduciary—procurement and accounting activities of select donor projects funded by the World Bank, the African Development Bank, BADEA and others. The institution is staffed with professionals including accountants, many of which are chartered, as well as trained and experienced procurement specialists.
The limited number of donor-funded procurement opportunities put out by PFMU attracts hundreds of contractors in the market place. And the scramble for these limited opportunities also attracts rogue players, many of whom will go to any lengths to undermine and discredit the procurement process, in their desperate quest for favors and unfair advantage. Many have history of poor past performance, including records of failure to deliver as per contracts. Frankly, some of these contractors should have no business in the public procurement space given their past performance history. What is more troubling is that some even go further to display reckless entitlement attitudes emanating from their perceived relationships with beneficiary institutions.
As a group of professionals working within the confines of confidentiality, the PFMU is constrained to make public the mountain of evidence it has on the activities of some of these rogue players, including fraudulent submissions and attempts to unduly influence the outcome of procurement processes. The PFMU is reluctant to dignify the unfounded allegations against it and its personnel that are making rounds in the media with a response. According to sources within PFMU, an independent contractor performance audit is being considered in order to determine the extent of shortcomings in delivery of some of these contracts.
We have managed to gather some facts regarding the IPRP matter. This piece is intended to throw light on those facts for the benefit of the public.
The Bank of Sierra Leone (BSL) data center procurement process, which started in January 2025 is at the center of the IPRP saga.
Consistent with applicable procurement rules, a technical evaluation committee comprising of five representatives—two from BSL, one from the Directorate of Science and Technology (DSTI), and one from the ICT department of the Ministry of Finance was put together by PFMU to evaluate bids submitted. The only member of the evaluation committee from PFMU is a procurement specialist who serves as the secretary with no bidder evaluation or grading privilege. The chair of the evaluation committee is one of the two members from BSL. As a result, PFMU is in no position to influence the outcome of the procurement process.
The evaluation comprises of two phases— the first is the technical evaluation and the second is the financial evaluation. An update is provided to bidders on how they performed on the technical evaluation at the conclusion of the first phase. As required by the procurement rules, a notice of intent to award is sent out to all bidders at the conclusion of the second phase of the evaluation. This notice is intended to allow bidders to seek redress for any grievance within 15 days before the contract is awarded to the winning bidder. In the case of the BSL data center procurement in question, two of the bidders— Smart Network Solution Limited and Computer Shop Limited filed a complaints to the Independent Procurement Review Panel (IPRP)— a public procurement grievance redress body at the end of the first phase. Both firms declined PFMU’s invitation to a debriefing— a standard procurement process where the evaluation committee can provide additional details about the shortcomings noted in the bidder’s technical proposals and answer any questions that the bidders may have.
The IPRP reportedly sent a letter to PFMU demanding the institution to be provided all documentation pertaining to the evaluation, including those submitted by the “winning bidder”. However, there was no winning bidder at the time as the evaluation was still in progress.
According to reports, PFMU responded to the IPRP request, stating that the evaluation was still in progress, and that the institution was constrained to release confidential documentation. Sources within the institution stated that PFMU also intends to provide the requested information at the end of the second phase of the evaluation and during the 15-day period provided for grievance redress. The IPRP reportedly refused to accept this offer and continued to send letters demanding that the documents be handed over and summoning PFMU personnel to a hearing.
According to our source, the matter was at that point escalated to the financial secretary in the Ministry of Finance, who supervises the PFMU.
According to reports, the financial secretary also expressed concerns about disclosing sensitive procurement documents at such an early stage due to the potential risk of compromising procurement process. Reportedly, the FS invited the IPRP to a meeting to discuss reasons why they should not interrupt the evaluation process and wait for the grievance redress stage. The IPRP reportedly declined to meet, citing independence limitations. After the refusal by the IPRP to meet, the financial secretary reportedly sent a letter to the Attorney General’s office to seek legal opinion as to whether the IPRP has the right to demand the sensitive procurement documents in the middle of the evaluation.
The request for legal opinion came against the backdrop that Section 1(2) of the Public Procurement Act makes provision that where there is a conflict between national procurement laws and donor procurement guidelines, the latter should prevail.
The Solicitor General (SG), who was expected to provide the legal opinion reportedly delayed to do so. Our investigation has disclosed the SG also doubles as an active panel member of the IPRP. In fact, he wrote the ruling which accuses PFMU and its leadership of abuse of power and corruption, because the institution cited constrains to release the sensitive documentation to IPRP at the time.
It has now a matter of whether the conflict of interest— serving on the panel of the IPRP and writing the ruling against PFMU will allow the SG to also issue an independent and objective opinion on behalf of the Attorney-General’s office regarding the right of the IPRP to request for the documentation. This conflict of interest has now put the SG at the center of a debate surrounding his office’s fair representation of government in litigations brought by contractors who have challenged public procurement outcomes in the past, leveraging the IPRP redress mechanism.
To break the impasse, the Chief Minister reportedly summoned all parties— the financial secretary, SG, PFMU, IPRP, and BSL to a meeting. After several deliberations, the conflict of interest faced by the SG due to his dual role became apparent according to our source. It was also observed that the delay by the SG to issue the legal opinion was self-evident. It became clear that pursuant to section 1(2) of the Public Procurement Act, the PFMU had a well founded basis is law to have not handed over the documents in the middle of the evaluation. Furthermore, it became a matter of urgency given the “public interest” nature of the activity, the limited time left for the data center to be completed, and the risk of losing donor funds should the activity be canceled due to delay in procurement.
By: Ahmed T. Kanu
Freelance Investigative Journalist
April 13, 2025