The decision by President Bola Tinubu to implement the Steven Oronsaye report after 12 years of being abandoned in the racks by his predecessors has received applause from across the country.
Nigerians who reacted to the news believed that the implementation has been long overdue and commended the President for dusting the documents and ready to act on them.
However, President Tinubu has been advised to put transparent, fool-proof and accountable mechanisms impossible to interfere before kick-starting the implementation process.
HURIWA lauds initiative
Applauding the move by the President, Human Rights Writers Association said the decision of President Tinubu to trim down the number of Federal Government’s funded agencies in line with the renowned Steven Oronsaye report is a welcome development.
HURIWA however thinks that the disposition of the Nigerian government to merge some of the agencies of the Federal Government would not make any sense if the over bloated executive cabinet of the federation constituted with about 48 ministers is not also reduced to just 36 which is the recommendation of the Nigerian constitution.
In a statement by its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko and made available to The Point, HURIWA therefore wants the government to put transparent, fool-proof and accountable mechanisms impossible to interfere before kick-starting the process which includes payment of unemployment benefits to youths who truly deserve it.
HURIWA expressed excitement that the implementation of the Oronsaye report signifies that several agencies of the government would be merged, subsumed, scrapped, and relocated, however warned that viable agencies such as Federal Road Safety Commission recommended for merger should be left as they are so as not to create bureaucratic bottlenecks.
The Rights group said, “It is economically wise to carry out thorough financial audits of the agencies to be merged or scrapped so as not to throw away the baby with the bathwater. From the benefits of hindsight, many of the apparently money-guzzling federal agencies deserve to be scrapped to save Nigeria from the heavy financial burden that such unproductive entities constituted.”
ICT Consultant, Yak Alhamdu called on the President not to allow sentiments in the implementation of the reports. He said the President has shown capacity in pulling the country out of its unimaginable hardship but warned that so many “hawks” if given the assignment would derail it by involving unnecessary sentiments.
“For declaring this, Mr. President has shown capacity to pull us out of this unimaginable depth of hardship. He is always working for what will give us the best. When he removed the fuel subsidy it was like heaven has fallen but I tell you, the removal is not our problem. Our problem is the sabotage from those within and without his government. Many of the people around him don’t want him to succeed and this is my fear with the implementation of the Oronsaye report. Those he will saddle with the responsibility to work out the implementation may turn around to destroy the workability of the report so that Nigerians will be clamouring for a return to status quo. We are terrible people. The destroyers of our commonwealth are those claiming to love Nigeria more than others, but all the same, President Tinubu should not leave it all in the control of those he will appoint to carry out the exercise. It’s a good omen,” he said.
“For declaring this, Mr. President has shown capacity to pull us out of this unimaginable depth of hardship. He is always working for what will give us the best”
Ohanaeze makes case for PRODA, FIIRO
Apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youth Council Worldwide has alerted the President of a sinister plot to emasculate the only conspicuous Federal Government agency, the Projects Development Institute, cited in Enugu in the South East zone.
The Igbo group raised the alarm at a press conference in Abuja on Thursday, where it said those behind the move were hiding under a doctored Oronsaye report to carry out their evil agenda.
National President of the Ohanaeze Youths, Okwu Nnabuike, who was flanked by other executive committee members of the organisation, called on President Tinubu to be wary of those hell-bent on destroying his government.
He said in line with the Oronsaye report, what PRODA deserved was proper funding in order to carry out its statutory mandate.
Nnabuike further said PRODA has been up to its responsibility, stressing that “anyone in doubt is free to visit the place.”
The youth leader said they were taken aback “by a recent doctored report planted by fifth columnists, in which they listed the Project Development Institute Enugu, as one of the agencies of government to be merged or scrapped.
“We received this with great consternation and shock considering the clear provisions of the Oronsaye report, as well as the report by the then Secretary to the Government of the Federation, which formed the government White Paper.
“The SGF report titled: “RE: Restructuring & rationalisation of Federal Government parastatals, commissions and agencies”, clearly provides in Item D that: ‘The Government accepts the recommendation that: a) NASENI and NCAM be merged but with the exclusion of FIIRO and PRODA.”
“With the above, one then wonders the intent and drive of those behind the list being circulated in the media space.”
Explaining further, Nnabuike noted, “A little look into history shows that PRODA was a creation of the defunct East Central State Government. It was created through an edict in 1971.
“It was charged with the broad function of generating and catalysing industrialization by carrying out industrial research from the laboratory stage to the pilot plant stage and by rendering consultancy services to the governments, industries and individuals.
“PRODA is one of the oldest research institutions under the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology.
“When the East Central State was split in 1976, the Federal Government recognized the need not to balkanize PRODA by the emerging states and hence took it over as a Federal Government Research Institute.”
He argued that ever since then, PRODA has evolved under different leaderships, experiencing neglect from one time to the other.
“However, within the last few years, like a human being who miraculously came out of coma, PRODA again became a cynosure of all eyes, with a lot of reforms being initiated to take it back to the glory days,” he noted.
He expressed worry that “the same people who held PRODA down over the years are at it again.
“This time, they want to kill it completely for a reason best known to them, but definitely not in national interest.
“Their only interest is that anything associated with Ndigbo must not be allowed to survive. These are people who feel that the civil war has not ended and that anything situated in Igbo land must be emasculated.”
Re-echoing Alhamdu, the Ohaneze Youth President accused those at the corridors of power of perpetrating divisive antics saying, “They profess one Nigeria but their actions show a totally different thing.
“We, therefore, warn those doctoring the Oronsaye report to keep PRODA away from their evil agenda, as any attempt to implement the compromised version would not augur well. Enough of this humiliation and insult to the sensibilities of Ndigbo.
“The Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youth Council gave President Bola Tinubu their total support during the presidential election and would want the president to succeed. However, he should be wary of those planting seeds of discord and working hard to discredit the government and urged him not to continue with the treatments his predecessor meted to Ndigbo.
“We urge Mr President to discard the doctored report and stick with the original version as contained in the SGF’s letter, dated April 8, 2014.”
The House of Representatives has after due considerations on its workability, urged the President to comprehensively review the report alongside the Goni Aji report which reviewed it, the White Paper released by the President Jonathan administration, the Ama Pepple White Paper and the Ebele Okeke White Paper in line with current realities, before implementation.
The House cautioned that it should be done in a manner that it would have minimum unintended consequences, impacts, implications and outcomes.
The caution came on the heels of several complaints trailing the intended implementation with Ohaneze Youth, HURIWA, and some groups calling the President’s attention to clandestine moves by some people to rob some zones of Federal Government presence by ensuring that projects in those zones are either scrapped or subsumed.
Kama Nkemkanma, Olumide Osoba, and Jonathan Gaza Gbefwi jointly sponsored a motion calling on the President to comprehensively review the report before implementation recalling that after the committee’s report, the White Paper committee set up by Jonathan’s administration rejected most of the recommendations, while those accepted were not implemented.
“The full implementation of a report 12 years after it was first made, which ordinarily may be described as outdated, especially because of how dynamic the society, economy, polity, technology and all facets of our national life has been may not be okay without a thorough review.”
They said the full implementation of the report will not substantially reduce the cost of governance as it does not reflect the current situation in the public service of the federation which is contrary to the assumption that it would reduce cost of governance, with the current realities.
A former lawmaker and human rights activist, Shehu Sani wrote off the report arguing that it is outdated and needs to be updated before implementation.
Sani stated this in an interview while considering its workability.
He said the report has become obsolete due to the proliferation of new agencies and commissions since its inception.
He added that legislators’ performance was often measured by the number of bills they sponsored or the creation of federal agencies and commissions resulting from their initiatives, thereby leading to a high number of federal agencies and commissions in the country.
He maintained that the approach did not align with the country’s economic realities.
According to him, “Most of these commissions were created by the National Assembly. When you are elected into office as a senator or as a member of the House of Representatives, one of the factors that they use to gauge your performance or stewardship in office is the number of bills you are able to sponsor, or the number of federal agencies that came out of your bills.
“And as such, you see every year, legislators come out with all sorts of ideas about commissions and agencies and boards and bureaus. But we don’t take cognizance of the fact that we are a poor country, a nation of 224 million people with such little resources.
“Some of the agencies that we created in this country are so irrelevant and useless. And it’s time that we implemented this report.
“But Oronsaye report could have been updated. The President could have invited Oronsaye and his committee and said, ‘update your report based on the new commissions and agencies that have been created after your report,’ because as it’s now, the report is outdated.
“If you live in Abuja today, there’s hardly any street you will move without seeing an agency you never knew before. It’s either one commission on this or an agency on that.
“Now, look at the number of the agencies that came after the Oronsaye report. So if you look at what’s being done now, it’s simply ‘let’s implement this without thinking that it has gone out of date.’
“So, the best thing now is to invite Oronsaye and ask him to update his report and then the government can implement it,” he said.
The Oronsaye report was formulated in 2011 by the then-President Goodluck Jonathan under the Presidential Committee on the Rationalization and Restructuring of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions, and Agencies.
However, the reverse was the case as over bloating of departments and agencies became the norm with the Federal Government that set up the committee for the aforementioned purposes turning around to create and establish several duplicates.
A lawyer, Remy Lambert described the decision of the President on the report as a step in the right direction which, if not sabotaged by those who will implement it, will produce an effective civil and public service structure for the country.
Lambert said, “It’s true that the report had been in the cooler for almost 12 years now but the good thing is that there are areas that are very relevant to tackling our present day crises. President Tinubu has exhumed what Jonathan and Buhari buried. If the former Presidents had implemented part of this report by now, some of the crises we are facing would not have been there. As a country, we have agencies and departments littered here and there with the same job specifications. Different people employed to do the same work, different people paid for doing the same work. Take road traffic for instance; see the number of uniformed people on the road controlling, collecting revenue, checking this and that. Where else does this happen? The President should hasten action on this. I’m comfortable with this move.”
In contrast, human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, described the 12-year old report recommending the merger of government agencies and commissions as outdated.
He urged the government to merge the two chambers of the National Assembly, significantly reduce the number of Ministers, Special Advisers, Senior Special Assistants and Special Assistants.
In a statement last week, the Senior Advocate of Nigeria said contrary to the belief in official circles, the report won’t “substantially reduce the enormous costs of governance in the country as it does not reflect the current situation in the public service.”
He said, “No doubt, the implementation of some of the recommendations of the panel will take appreciable time as the merger of certain bodies require constitutional amendments or repeal of a number of statutes.
“The 800-page report of the Steve Oronsaye panel recommended the reduction of statutory agencies from 263 to 161, scrapping 38 agencies, merging 52, and reverting 14 to departments in different ministries,
“Since the Goodluck Jonathan administration produced a White Paper on the Steve Oronsaye Report in 2014, the Federal Government has created more ministries, departments and agencies.
“Whereas the Report recommended the reduction of 263 agencies to 151, the number of ministries, departments and agencies has increased to 1316. Even the current administration has increased the number of ministries and created new agencies. To that extent, the Steve Oronsaye report is completely outdated.
“However, in implementing the Oronsaye report the Federal Government should ensure that the crisis of insecurity is not compounded through the retrenchment of hundreds of thousands of workers.
“Instead of downsizing the public service the Federal Government should ensure that the two houses of the National Assembly are merged while the number of Ministers, Special Advisers, Senior Special Assistants and Special Assistants is significantly reduced,” he said.
The decision to adopt the implementation of the Oronsaye report was made at the Federal Executive Council meeting chaired by President Bola Tinubu on Monday.
Consequently, 29 government agencies will be merged even as eight parastatals will be subsumed into eight other agencies.
More so, four agencies have been relocated to four various ministries and while one was earmarked for scrapping.
The President’s Special Adviser on Policy Coordination, Hadiza Bala-Usman announced the agencies to be merged to include the National Agency for Control of HIV/AIDS to be merged with the Centre for Disease Control in the Federal Ministry of Health.
“No doubt, the implementation of some of the recommendations of the panel will take appreciable time as the merger of certain bodies requires constitutional amendments or repeal of a number of statutes”
Affected agencies
The National Emergency Management Agency is to be merged with the National Commission for Refugee Migration and Internally Displaced Persons; the Directorate of Technical Cooperation in Africa is to be merged with the Directorate of Technical Aid and to function as a department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission will be merged with the Bureau for Public Enterprises; the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission to be integrated into the Nigerian Export Promotion Council as the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure will now be one with the National Centre for Agriculture Mechanisation and Project Development Institute.
Also, the National Biotechnology Development Agency will be amalgamated with the National Centre for Genetic Resource and Biotechnology, the National Institute for Leather Science Technology with the National Institute for Chemical Technology and the Nomadic Education Commission with the National Commission for Mass Literacy, Adult Education and Non-formal Education.
The Federal Radio Corporation will be merged with the Voice of Nigeria; the National Commission for Museum and Monuments with the National Gallery of Arts; the National Theatre with the National Troupe of Nigeria and the National Metrological Development Centre with the National Metrological Training Institute.
In a similar vein, the Nigerian Army University, Biu, Borno State will now function as a faculty within the Nigerian Defence Academy while the Air Force Institute of Technology will become a faculty of the Nigerian Defence Academy.
According to Bala-Usman, the Service Compact with Nigeria, popularly known as SERVICOM, has been subsumed to function as a department under the Bureau for Public Service Reform; the Border Communities Development Agency becomes a department at the National Boundary Commission while the National Salaries Income and Wages Commission was subsumed into the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Allocation Commission.
The Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution was subsumed under the Institute for International Affairs; the Public Complaints Commission under the National Human Rights Commission; the Nigerian Institute for Trypanosomiasis into the Institute for Veterinary Research; the National Medicine Development Agency under the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development and the National Intelligence Agency Pension Commission under the Nigerian Pension Commission.
She announced that the Niger Delta Power Holding Company has been relocated to the Ministry of Power; the National Agricultural Land Development Agency to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security; the National Blood Service Commission has been converted into an agency and relocated to the Federal Ministry of Health even as the Nigerian Diaspora Commission becomes an agency at the Federal Ministry of Finance.
The Presidential aide revealed that Tinubu constituted a committee to midwife the necessary restructuring and legislative amendments needed to ensure full actualisation of the approvals granted.
She revealed, “He tasked this committee with an immediate term of reference to proceed and ensure all of these are done within a period of 12 weeks. The committee membership comprises the Secretary to the Government of Federation, who will chair the committee; the Head of Civil Service of the Federation, member; the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, member; the Honourable Minister of Budget and National Planning, member; the Director-General, Bureau of Public Service Reform, member; the Special Adviser to the President on Policy and Coordination is a member; the two Senior Special Assistants to the President on National Assembly are members; and the Cabinet Affairs Office will serve as secretariat.”
The committee, she said, would consider the administrative restructuring and also the legislative amendments required to ensure the full implementation of the recommendations.
