The Centre for Management Development (CMD) says it plans to accredit 300 additional management consultancy firms in 2016 in order to rid the management sector of fake operators.

CMD is an agency under the Federal Ministry of Budget and Planning saddled with the responsibility of developing the country’s human capital.

The Director-General of the centre, Dr Kabir Usman, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Abuja.

Usman said that the current number of management consultancy outfits had surpassed last year’s by 50 per cent.

“We want to increase the number by 50 per cent; so when we had about 200 on our list, we are targeting 300 this year.

“This reason is simple; it is a prudent budget by the government, which we felt is cogent and giving us the resources we require to deliver our mandate.

“Particularly, if the funds being allocated are released, certainly we will be able achieve our targets and all those quack consultants will diminish.”

Usman said that quackery in the management sector could only be checked via an accreditation process to ensure that clients got value for their money.

“We have a quality assurance framework that is being implemented.

“Basically, it is about inspection of training institutions, whether they are owned by government or in the private sector.

“And we did that in about 20 of them because of challenges in terms of funds, to try and ensure that there is quality assurance, there is quality control, there is control improvement and there is also quality intervention.

“I am sure you are aware of quack consultants (management consultants) who are moving around with brief cases, but making a lot of money without necessary providing quality services.

“We want to double the number of quality assurance this year.”

He said that the centre would start sanctioning management consultants, who failed to meet up with the best practice in management sector.

The director-general further said that the Act that would enable the centre to sanction defaulters had been approved by the Federal Executive Council following a review in 2011.

“It was approved and it went to National Assembly but up till now, nothing has happened; so as a result that, it will be one of our tasks this year.

“We have to make sure that the Act goes through because it gives us power to apply sanctions to those management development institutions that are practising without a licence to practice.

“If there is any management consultant that has not accredited by us, if there is management development institutions, they are operating illegally and they will prosecuted.”

He added that the centre built the capacity of 5,000 workers across the country in 2015 on various management and development courses.

“All together at state level in the area of Monitoring and Evaluation, Project Management; we had minimum of 5,000 participants across the country.

“The Centre for Management Development is a national agency even though it is owned by the Federal Government.

“We have touched the workforce at the local government level, at state and local government levels and Federal Government. We have touched all the three tiers of government.

“We also had a lot of interaction with the political parties about mandate of the political parties and their manifestoes and also training of members of various councils and boards in all parastatals.

“So, we had a wide scope and we are pushing agenda in that frontier of capacity building.”

“We intend to increase our activities by 10 per cent in 2016, so it is going to be between 5,500 and 6,000 participants.” (NAN)

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