The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, said during a television programme on Thursday that there is no plan by the Federal Government to lay off government workers.
The minister denied claims that the government was planning to sack workers in order to save funds.
She said President Muhammadu Buhari had said repeatedly that no worker would be sacked. The minister, however, said the government would encourage people to leave government jobs by giving them incentives.
Ahmed said the government would reduce overheads by ensuring that government agencies are merged.
She added, “Mr. President doesn’t want to disengage staff. That is what he has directed from the beginning of his administration. He also directed that we pay salaries. The Federal Government has never failed in paying salaries and he said we must always pay pensions.
“So, he has been consistent in those directives and we have followed those directives to the letter.”
When asked how the government would cut personnel costs, Ahmed said, “Well, we do hope that at the end of the exercise, some agencies will be merged and it will cut down operational costs.”
In November last year, the Buhari administration activated moves to implement the White Paper on Restructuring and Rationalisation of Federal Government Parastatals, Agencies and Commission, as it inaugurated two sub-committees to review the main report and the document proper.
Both panels were given six weeks to conclude their work and submit reports.
A rationalisation committee, constituted in 2011 and headed by former Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Stephen Oronsaye, had, in its report submitted on April 16, 2012, recommended a reduction in the number of federal agencies from 263 to 161 to reduce the cost of governance in the country.
However, ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, in April 2014, ordered the establishment of a white paper implementation committee on the report of the Presidential Committee on the Restructuring and Rationalisation of Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies.
“How many people are in the Federal Civil Service that control 70 percent of Nigeria’s budget, and what is the result?
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Speaking on November 4, 2021, at the inauguration of the sub-committees in Abuja, Secretary to Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, noted that the inability to implement the report was costing the government highly.
Represented by Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Folasade Yemi-Esan, the SGF lamented that Nigeria had continued to suffer under the increasing weight of the high cost of governance underpinned by high personnel and overhead costs at the detriment of developmental projects.
His words, “As you are aware, various administrations have been concerned with different aspects of governance of the public service, and one
of these areas has always been the increasing cost of governance without seeming concurrent productivity in the quality of service delivery.
“This had led to a number of reforms, some of which achieved their objectives, others did not, while some were either truncated or not implemented at all. It was in a bid to address this, among others, that the Committee on the Restructuring and Rationalisation of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies was constituted on August 18, 2011 and submitted its report on April 16, 2012.”
Mustapha continued, “The report recommended that of the 541 statutory and non-statutory Federal Government parastatals, agencies and commissions, 263 statutory agencies should be reduced to 161, 38 agencies should be abolished, 52 agencies should be merged, and 14 should revert back to departments in ministries.
“Subsequently, the White Paper on the report was issued and published in March 2014 and was followed by the White Paper implementation Committee inaugurated in May 2014. However, for a number of reasons, most of which were anchored on political expediency, the White Paper not only rejected a large number of the recommendations, it also merely noted an equally greater number of others. But again even those accepted were not implemented.”
So far, from the government’s response to the report and the reactions of a cross-section of Nigerians, we are drawn back to the characterization of Nigeria as a “hesitant” reformer.
It is our point that in order to give a fillip to the implementation of the committee’s report an immediate logical first step is to set up an implementation committee to be made up of men and women of good standing, devoid of partisanship, ethnic and religious consideration.
We can’t ignore the fact that the amount of money the country spends on governance is mind-boggling.
How many people are in the Federal Civil Service that control 70 percent of Nigeria’s budget, and what is the result?
It is not enough to say you are scraping a parastatal, there must be political reform first.
It is our opinion that the political class shows an example by starting the reform from the political structure. It is the public service that supports the political structure, but it would be hypocritical to try to reform the public service before the political structure.
The Federal Government should reduce the number of ministers by half and permanent secretaries by half too. If this needs constitutional amendment, so be it. So, we must show good examples and political leadership also.
For any country, and especially for Nigeria, these are terrible times. To say that the Nigerian economy is facing a daunting challenge is a gross understatement. There is a massive crash of the international oil prices, there is already in place an economic stagnation occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic. The country is getting ensnared by mounting external loans in spite of the gloomy fact that twenty-five percent of the federal revenue is spent annually on servicing existing debt portfolios. And the foreign reserve keeps getting dangerously depleted. If the government, therefore, is not committed to implementing this Report before the expiration of Buhari’s administration in May 2023 to effectively reduce the cost of governance and its burden on infrastructural development and productivity in Nigeria, then there is no other time that will be auspicious.
We cannot underestimate the significance of the Oronsaye Report to the recuperation of Nigeria’s productivity dynamics. And it is getting this productivity matrix right that opens the gate for increased infrastructural development that will fundamentally transform the well-being of Nigeria.
