A Senior Advocate of Nigeria and professor of law, University of Lagos, Wole Smith has urged lawyers and procurement officers in the country to develop laws that would govern contracts in their areas of specialization.
 
According to him, it is safer for the procurement officers to have their own laws.
 
His words: “The civil law system is very rigid and there is no liability there.  And then we have liability under common law. I believe that the laws of this country shall apply to those things except that we find most construction of projects involving different processes and different milestone, involving people from different places.”
 
Smith made this statement on a three-day training organized by the First Track Educational Resources Limited.
 
The event with the theme ‘capacity building for lawyers and procurement officers in the federal ministry of water resources’, had other speakers such as Dr. Dayo Ayoade, professor Aimi Awah, professor Ocheme and professor Abiola Sanni.
 
The speakers talked on various topics such as international best practice in projects and construction agreement, a guide to statutory and regulatory framework of public procurement, procurement integrity, ethics, due process and among others.
 
Smith said: “You have to adopt some rules into contracts, which will guide the execution of that contract and if there is any problem along the line then, the ADR will have the course to go through it. In arbitration, there are special rules.
 
“Those rules are just lifted and put into that contract as reference. So, I believe that we need to be flexible.


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