By Olanrewaju O. Ogunmilua (PhD)
Nigeria’s public procurement system is entering a period in which government purchasing can no longer be treated merely as an administrative mechanism for acquiring goods, works and services. It is at this point that Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP) assumes strategic importance. Sustainable Public Procurement requires government to look beyond the immediate acquisition price and consider the wider economic, social and environmental consequences of its purchasing decisions. For Nigeria, this raises a fundamental question: How much of government expenditure is helping Nigerian SMEs and manufacturers to grow, create employment, develop technology, expand production and compete successfully?
The question has become more pressing under the Federal Government’s Nigeria First Policy. When the Federal Executive Council approved the policy in May 2025, it made the position plain: no foreign goods or services already produced locally should be procured without clear justification, and the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) was directed to revise its guidelines to prioritise locally made goods. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu restated the point in his 2026 Budget Speech of 19 December 2025, explaining that the policy was established to encourage self-sufficiency and sustainable growth by promoting domestic products and businesses, with all MDAs expected to consider Nigerian-made goods and local companies as their primary option. This creates an opportunity to transform public procurement from a system concerned principally with how government spends into one that also asks what government spending builds within the Nigerian economy. The experience of Nigerian businesses on international sourcing platforms such as China’s Canton Fair shows why that transition has become necessary.
The Canton Fair: More Than a Marketplace
The Canton Fair is one of the world’s major platforms connecting international buyers with Chinese manufacturers and exporters, and its matchmaking system goes well beyond displaying products. Through its Trade Bridge programme, the Fair organises targeted matchmaking between global sourcing enterprises and Chinese industrial clusters, including factory visits and direct engagement with foreign-trade enterprises. Nigeria has featured specifically in these sessions, covering electronics and appliances, fashion, home textiles, building and furniture products, and manufacturing. The point is simple: trade exhibitions are not merely marketplaces; they are also powerful instruments for understanding demand. Every serious buyer communicates information. The products Nigerian businesses enquire about, the quantities requested, the specifications sought, the prices negotiated and the orders eventually placed together paint a detailed picture of Nigerian consumer and business demand. There is nothing improper in this. Market research and customer intelligence are normal features of international commerce. But Nigerian policymakers and businesses must recognise that market information itself has economic value.
When the Buyer Becomes the Competitor
A recurring concern among Nigerian traders is that they travel abroad, identify products, establish supplier relationships, place orders and build markets for those products at home, only to find themselves later competing with foreign-owned or foreign-linked businesses selling similar products more directly within Nigeria. The Nigerian entrepreneur bears the initial commercial risk. He identifies the product, commits capital, pays for international freight, clears the goods, finances warehousing and distribution, builds customer relationships and tests whether a market actually exists. Once that demand becomes visible, a manufacturer or a better-capitalised foreign distributor can enter the same market with clear advantages in factory pricing, capital, production scale and supply-chain access. The original importer may then find that the very product he introduced has become difficult for him to sell competitively. The concern has now reached the level of regional leadership. Speaking at the 2026 Igbo Day Lecture organised by Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide in Umuahia on 28 September, Abia State Governor Dr Alex Otti responded to the growing presence of Chinese traders in Lagos retail markets not by calling for restrictions, but by urging Igbo traders to change their business model: “We are leaving that level of trading. In Abia, we have markets. The markets are important. But we are moving from that level of marketing to manufacturing.” He added that Abia was moving from conventional trading to digital trading, warning: “You either embrace it, or you risk being left behind.” The Governor’s diagnosis is the right one, and it points to where the policy answer lies. Nigerian purchasing behaviour reveals Nigerian demand, but foreign manufacturers often have far greater capacity to convert that information into production and competitive market entry. The lesson, therefore, is not to blame the Canton Fair or the Chinese trader. It is to understand the economic power of market intelligence, and to ensure that the Nigerians who generate it are positioned to produce, not merely to import.
China Is Not the Problem; Nigeria’s Production Gap Is
The appropriate response is neither anti-China sentiment nor indiscriminate protectionism. China’s manufacturing competitiveness is the outcome of decades of investment in infrastructure, industrial clusters, logistics, technology, skills, finance and export capacity, and Nigeria should study that achievement closely. The question Nigeria must confront is more uncomfortable: Why can a product be manufactured thousands of kilometres away, shipped to Nigeria, cleared through our ports, distributed within the country and still, in many cases, compete successfully with a Nigerian-made equivalent? Part of the answer lies in Nigeria’s production environment. Local manufacturers contend with expensive and unreliable energy, high financing costs, infrastructure deficits, logistics bottlenecks, foreignexchange exposure, multiple taxes and regulatory costs, limited economies of scale and inconsistent government demand. The last of these is the one procurement can address most directly. Nigeria’s industrial-policy direction already recognises much of this. In unveiling the Nigeria Industrial Policy 2025 in February 2026, the President spoke of moving steadily from exporting raw materials to producing finished goods, of integrating MSMEs into the heart of industrial growth, and of aligning infrastructure and energy with industrial ambition, because “factories cannot run on policy alone.” Public procurement must become part of that industrial strategy.
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Nigeria First Must Become a Procurement Methodology
Nigeria First should not remain a slogan. It must become measurable procurement practice, and there is precedent to build on. Executive Order 003 of 2017 already requires all federal MDAs to grant preference to local manufacturers of goods and service providers, and directs that at least 40 per cent of procurement expenditure on listed items should go to locally manufactured goods or local service providers. BPP also maintains an approved policy for the procurement of health and medical equipment and publishes lists of accredited locally manufactured brands. Yet experience since 2017 shows that preference on paper does not automatically become patronage in practice, and manufacturers have long complained that compliance with EO 003 was uneven. The difference this time must lie in measurement and enforcement. BPP should therefore consider developing a comprehensive Sustainable Public Procurement and Nigerian Industrial Development Framework. Such a framework would identify goods and services where Nigeria already has sufficient production capacity, sectors where capacity can realistically be built, and strategic categories where technology transfer or local assembly should form part of procurement strategy. It should also require MDAs to report what share of their spending went to genuinely Nigerian-made goods, so that compliance is tracked rather than assumed.
Selling in Nigeria Is Not the Same as Manufacturing in Nigeria
This distinction matters more as foreign companies set up Nigerian operations. A foreign company that registers a Nigerian subsidiary, opens a warehouse and imports finished products should not automatically be treated as equivalent to a manufacturer running production facilities in Nigeria. Registration in Nigeria is not necessarily manufacturing in Nigeria. The Federal Executive Council made a similar point when it approved Nigeria First, warning that contractors would no longer act as intermediaries sourcing foreign goods while local factories die. Nigeria First procurement rules should therefore measure actual domestic economic contribution. Relevant indicators could include local manufacturing or substantial transformation, the share of Nigerian inputs, Nigerian employment, local supplier participation, domestic capital investment, technology and skills transfer, research and development, maintenance capability, apprenticeship programmes, and taxes generated through substantive domestic operations, among others. Foreign companies should remain welcome competitors. But Nigeria’s message should increasingly be: If you want sustained access to Nigeria’s public procurement market, invest, manufacture, employ, transfer knowledge and create measurable value in Nigeria. The Minister of State for Industry, Chief John Owan Enoh, made the same argument in January 2026, observing that telling a company like Toyota that no government agency would buy its vehicles unless it set up plants in Nigeria would make sense, because the Nigerian market matters to such firms. That principle should apply equally whether the company comes from China, Europe, America, India or anywhere else.
Protect SMEs, but Make Them Competitive
Nigeria must equally avoid replacing foreign competition with inefficient domestic monopolies. Protection without productivity simply produces expensive industries. Sustainable Public Procurement should therefore work as both a shield and a ladder: a shield that gives viable Nigerian manufacturers and SMEs room to withstand overwhelming international competition while they build capacity, and a ladder that pushes them to improve productivity, technology, quality and scale until they can compete without permanent protection. The sequence should be Protect → Develop → Scale → Compete.
This is also where procurement meets Governor Otti’s call. A trader who moves into manufacturing needs a reliable first customer while volumes are still small and unit costs still high, and government, with its large and recurring purchasing needs, is well placed to provide that early, predictable demand. BPP can support this through a national supplier-development programme. SMEs could be categorised by demonstrated capacity, and contracts packaged so that smaller enterprises are not shut out by unnecessarily large lots, excessive turnover requirements or disproportionate qualification conditions. The digital shift the Governor spoke about has a procurement dimension too: e-procurement that publishes opportunities openly and allows bids without physical submission lowers the cost of participation for firms in Aba, Kano or Onitsha as much as for those in Abuja and Lagos. The goal is not simply to give Nigerian SMEs contracts. It is to use contracts to build Nigerian SMEs capable of competing internationally.
From China-to-Nigeria to China-with-Nigeria
Nigeria’s economic relationship with China should evolve in the same direction. The first stage has largely been: China manufactures → Nigeria imports. A more productive relationship would look like this: China manufactures → Nigerian businesses distribute → Chinese and Nigerian companies partner → manufacturing relocates or expands into Nigeria → Nigerian workers acquire skills → Nigerian suppliers enter the value chain → Nigeria manufactures for Africa. Nigeria’s population and market size give it real bargaining power, and the country should use it deliberately. Foreign manufacturers that see significant Nigerian demand should increasingly view Nigeria not simply as a destination for finished products but as a manufacturing and export base for the continent, particularly as the African Continental Free Trade Area opens regional markets to goods made in Africa.
Conclusion: Use What Nigeria Buys to Build What Nigeria Needs
The lessons from the Canton Fair should not lead Nigeria toward isolation. They should lead Nigeria toward strategy. China has shown how manufacturing capability, market intelligence, technology, logistics and trade can reinforce one another, and Nigeria must learn the same lesson. Every procurement decision has an economic consequence somewhere. When government imports, part of that expenditure supports production and jobs elsewhere; when it competitively buys quality products made at home, far more of that activity stays within the Nigerian economy. In his Independence Day address on 1 October 2026, President Tinubu put the ambition simply: “I want to see more Nigerians making things.” Public procurement is one of the most direct tools government has to make that happen.
Government should continue to insist on competition, transparency, quality and value for money. But value for money must increasingly include value to the Nigerian economy. Nigeria should welcome foreign investment while demanding genuine local participation, support its SMEs while demanding rising competitiveness, and take part in international trade while using its own market information intelligently. The defining question for the next phase of procurement reform should no longer be “How cheaply can government buy?” It should be “How strategically can government buy to build Nigeria?” Nigeria must use what it buys to build what it needs, and use what it spends to build the Nigerian businesses that will produce it.
An Advisory Policy Article by Olanrewaju O. Ogunmilua (PhD)
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