The North East Development Commission (NEDC) says it will sustain and improve its International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certifications as part of efforts to strengthen institutional processes and improve project delivery across the North East.
NEDC Director General, Mohammed Alkali, disclosed this on Monday at the ISO 2026 Executive Retreat in Abuja, where senior management staff reviewed the commission’s operations and discussed measures to improve its performance.
Alkali said the commission, which has operated for more than seven years, needed to continually review and rebuild its processes as it matured.
He said the ISO certification provided external recognition that the commission had established systems that met international standards, but stressed that maintaining the certification would require continuous improvement.
“By implication, we have to now keep that standard and improve on it. And that is what we want to do going forward,” Alkali said.
According to him, the retreat was designed to provide an opportunity for senior managers to assess existing practices, identify areas for improvement and develop practical ideas to strengthen the commission’s operations and projects.
Alkali also urged participants to engage in substantive discussions and develop workable recommendations that would support the commission’s development mandate.
NEDC has obtained five ISO certifications covering quality management, anti bribery management, occupational health and safety, environmental management and sustainable development management. The certifications are intended to provide structured systems for improving quality, accountability, safety, environmental management and sustainability in the commission’s operations.
The Acting Head of the Governance and Compliance Service Reform Unit, Fatima Dalhatu, said the commission needed to make ISO standards part of its institutional culture rather than treating certification as a standalone achievement.
She said the standards should become integrated into the commission’s daily operations and contribute to improvements in quality, accountability, integrity, safety and sustainability.
“Certification was just a milestone for NEDC,” Dalhatu said, adding that the broader objective was to establish a culture in which international standards became part of how the commission operated.
Kadija Mongonu of NEDC’s Strategic Communication Unit described the retreat as timely, noting that the commission’s five ISO certifications were internationally recognised.
She said the commission was moving from a phase of transition and expansion toward sustainable development, with the objective of ensuring that its projects, programmes and schemes were implemented sustainably.
Ali Usman, head of Special Projects in the Operations Directorate, said adherence to the standards was important for the effective implementation of NEDC’s master plan, which contains 11 pillars and four overlapping phases.
He said the commission’s projects and programmes were designed for communities across the six states of the North East and therefore needed to be delivered to appropriate quality standards while taking environmental and climate change considerations into account.
The focus on maintaining certification comes as NEDC manages a wide range of development interventions across the North East, a region facing significant infrastructure, economic, social and environmental challenges.
For the commission, the practical significance of the standards will ultimately depend on how effectively they are translated into project planning, procurement, implementation, monitoring and accountability.
The retreat brought together participants from the six states of the North East geopolitical zone.
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