Cutting governance cost beyond Oronsaye report

Amid the rising cost of governance and increasing public workforce, it is cheering that the Federal Government has decided to implement the report of Steve Oronsaye Committee of 2012. The committee was set up to review the cost of governance at the time and to make appropriate recommendations to moderate it in the public interest.

Incidentally, the President Bola Tinubu-led Federal Executive Council (FEC) is thought to be the largest cabinet in Nigeria’s recent history. The Oronsaye panel had recommended a drastic reduction in the size of government and cost of governance, through the merging of ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) that have overlapping functions; and outright scrapping of those with functions duplicating those of others. To demonstrate readiness, a committee of eight has been inaugurated by the government to work out the administrative and legislative requirements necessary to actualise the implementation of the report.
 
While there is agreement that the government can actually reduce running costs and thus free funds for critical infrastructure for Nigerians, reservations in some quarters about whether the government can successfully do this are not misplaced, having regard to the real changes in the country’s public service architecture that have taken place over the past 12 years.

There is also genuine concern that President Tinubu and his team have not demonstrated sufficient zeal in the area of cost reduction, given that most of the government’s actions are being done with the business-as-usual mentality. Besides the large cabinet, many huge budgetary provisions are considered to be outlandish and have little or no bearing on the major task of lifting Nigerians from multi-dimensional poverty. To debunk these notions, President Tinubu should implement the Oronsaye report conscientiously, and also convince Nigerians that he and his officials are prepared to lead by practical example in cutting waste in governance.
  
The Oronsaye panel was set up by former President Goodluck Jonathan in 2011 and was mandated to recommend ways and means to restructure and rationalise overlapping and oversized federal bureaucracy, parastatals, and agencies. Upon completion of the exercise, the panel submitted an 800-page report on April 16, 2012.

It recommended the merger and abolition of some agencies, with others that were deemed to have the capacity for self-funding to be encouraged to so remain. A white paper on the panel’s report was commissioned by the Jonathan-led administration and the paper was ready by March 2014. Two months later, an implementation committee was put together, but the report was not implemented.

The government of President Muhammadu Buhari equally released a second white paper on the report in August 2022, without going further to implement the report. It is therefore a welcome development that after 12 years of non-implementation amid an astronomic rise in public expenditure, the federal government now seems set to implement the report. The Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), George Akume, inaugurated the Committee to review the report and the white papers, on behalf of the president, restating the need to merge, relocate, subsume, or scrap some parastatals, agencies and commissions, to reduce the cost of governance and streamline efficiency across the governance value chain.
 
Mindful that there could be misalignments, the Committee is charged with reviewing current mandates to understand the functions, responsibilities and objectives of existing agencies and parastatals, identify redundancies and overlaps as well as conflicting objectives among the agencies involved in the exercise.
 
There is no doubt that this assignment will not be easy, with more agencies having been created after the Oronsaye report was submitted. The report recommended that 263 of the statutory agencies that were in existence 12 years ago be slashed to 161; 38 agencies be scrapped; 52 be merged and 14 be reverted to departments in various ministries, to save billions of naira.
 
Interrogating the planned implementation, the House of Representatives called for a comprehensive review of the report before implementation to avoid unintended consequences and implications. The House contended that contrary to assumptions that the implementation would reduce the cost of governance that might not be substantial as the report no longer reflects the current situation in the public service. There are now 1,316 agencies in the country.
 
Apart from guiding against errors, the Tinubu-led government’s Committee must be mindful that some legislations must be reworked, and others realigned since some of the agencies and commissions were creations of the National Assembly. For instance, if the National Salaries, Income and Wages Commission is to be subsumed under the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission as recommended, the National Assembly will need to amend the Constitution as RMFAC is a creation of the Constitution. Other agencies in that category will require amending the establishment laws to pave the way for implementation of the report.