Abstract Public procurement is one of the governance and socio-economic development levers a country uses for its development whether developed or developing. Like other federating entities, Akwa Ibom State has undergone tough procurement peculiarities even after the enactment of the Public Procurement Act in 2007 and other agencies or regulatory frameworks. Some of the challenges were non-implementation or bad application of procurement laws, corruption, poor planning and budgeting, limited competition, and undue lessening of importance to the capacity of procurement officers. There were inefficiencies that led to delayed execution of projects, escalation of prices for goods, works or services, and sub-standard delivery of services in realizing the development targets of the state. This research studied the hurdles of due process in public procurement within Akwa Ibom State and its effect on the aforesaid State's socio-economic development. For the selected research design, it entailed documentary and historiographical, whereby content analysis was adopted to analyze secondary data of official records, policy documents, and previous studies. It was discovered that inefficiencies in procurement procedures among other things had resulted into poor infrastructure, inadequate health care, poor education, and social challenges that have remained evidence of social development despite the revenue being generated by the state from oil. The study recommended retraining of procurement officers, strict monitoring of adherence to procurement law, transparency in the bidding process, and active participation of the citizenry in procurement matters for optimized public procurement to benefit Akwa Ibom State and thus become accountable and sustained in socio-economic development. Keywords: Public procurement, due process, Akwa Ibom State, procurement challenges, socio-economic development, corruption, compliance, transparency, capacity building.
Ebong et al. (Thu,) studied this question.