adminreporter
Cutting the Cost of Governance May not be enjoyed without a form of pain and sacrifices to enhance the Civil Service performance and Reforms
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has directed the implementation of the 2012 Oronsaye Report, which proposes reforms to the Civil Service and aims to reduce the cost of governance. The report recommends the scrapping, modification, and subsuming of some agencies, commissions, and departments, as well as moving some entities from one ministry to another to improve their operations.
To ensure the swift implementation of the proposed changes, a committee has been set up with the mandate to implement the mergers, scrapping, and relocations within 12 weeks. The Oronsaye Report contains several recommendations on Federal Government parastatals, commissions, and agencies, both statutory and non-statutory.
Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, disclosed this while briefing State House correspondents at the end of the FEC meeting, presided over by President Bola Tinubu, at the Council Chamber, Presidential Villa, Abuja.
The minister explained that with the adoption of the report, it means that some agencies, commissions and departments of government have been scrapped, some merged, some subsumed under some others and others moved under new ministries where they are supposed to perform better.
โIn a very bold move today, this administration, under the leadership of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, consistent again with his courage to take very far-reaching decisions in the interest of Nigerians, has taken a decision to implement the so called Orosanye Report.
โNow, what that means is that a number of agencies, commissions, and some departments have actually been scrapped, some have been merged, while others have been subsumed. Others, of course, have also been moved from some ministries to others where government feels they will operate better.
โLike I said, this is a very far-reaching decision. It is aimed, one, to fine-tune or to restructure government operations as a whole. Secondly, itโs in line also with decision of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to reduce the cost of governanceโ, he said.
He, however, explained that the adoption of the report did not mean people working in the affected agencies and departments will lose their jobs.
Background
President Goodluck Jonathanโs administration, in 2012, set up the Presidential Committee on the Rationalization and Restructuring of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies. The committee was headed by a retired federal civil servant and former Head of Service of the Federation, Stephen Oronsaye
After their painstaking assignment, the committee recommended the scrapping and merging of 220 out of the then existing 541 government agencies.
The committeeโs 800-page report noted that the governmentโs parastatals and agenciesโ functions are overlapping. The committee recommended the reduction of statutory agencies from 263 to 161.
The committee recommended the abolition of 38 agencies, the merger of 52 and the reversion of 14 to departments in ministries.
The committee also recommended the management audit of 89 agencies capturing biometric features of staff as well as the discontinuation of government funding of professional bodies/councils.
Oronsaye said then that if the committeeโs recommendation was implemented, the government would be saving over N862 billion between 2012 and 2015.
The breakdown showed that about N124.8 billion would be reduced from agencies proposed for abolition; about N100.6 billion from agencies proposed for mergers; about N6.6 billion from professional bodies; N489.9 billion from universities; N50.9 billion from polytechnics; N32.3 billion from colleges of education and N616 million from boards of federal medical centres.
If implemented, agencies that may be affected include the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, and Federal Road Safety Commission.
Other agencies cited doing overlapping functions are the Nigerian Communication Satellite Limited, the National Broadcasting Commission and the Nigeria Communications Commission in the area of frequency allocation.
Also, the Universal Basic Education Commission, Nomadic Education Commission, and National Mass Literacy Commission are performing overlapping functions and should be brought under one body.
The committee again believes NTA, FRCN, and VON should be under one management.
After the committeeโs report, the White paper committee set up by Jonathanโs administration rejected most of the recommendations, while those accepted were not implemented.
Punch/Vanguard
