The decision by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) to implement the Oronsaye report, which anchors essentially on cutting the costs of governance and enhancing the efficiency of the federal civil service, is a laudable development. It is another audacious presidential move that casts President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the mould of an intrepid leader who has the courage of his convictions.
It evinces a bold statement that his administration is a listening one, quite sensitive to public sensibilities. The removal of fuel subsidy which dovetailed into the precipitous rise in the costs of living has elicited more strindent calls for the government to curb waste, work for a leaner bureaucracy and save money for development.
The cacophony of admonition on the imperative of implementing the Oronsaye report actually presaged this administration. The report had gathered dust in the shelf for over a decade. The then President Goodluck Jonathan had on August 18, 2011 inaugurated a seven-member committee, headed by Stephen Oronsaye, a retired federal civil servant and former Head of the Civil Service, on the restructuring of federal parastatals and agencies. Umar Mohammed was the Secretary.
The committee was mandated to “study and review all previous reports/records on the restructuring of Federal Government parastatals, advise on whether they are still relevant and examine the enabling acts of all the federal agencies, parastatals and commissions and classify them into various sectors.”
They were also asked to “examine critically the mandates of the existing federal agencies, parastatals and commissions, determine areas of overlaps or duplications or redundancies and advise the Federal Government.” Oronsaye and his team submitted the report on April 16,2012. The Jonathan administration released a White Paper on the report two years after.
The 800-page report established the existence of 541 federal parastatals, agencies and commissions but discovered that only 263 were statutory, while 278 were not. It uncovered overlapping agencies “duplicating mandates and replicating extant laws.” They were nothing but terrible leeches on government’s resources. They engaged in cut-throat rivalries and engendered ill-feelings as well as wastage in the system.
The committee recommended that the 263 statutory agencies be reduced to 161. Thirty-eight others were recommended to be scrapped, 52 to be merged, while 14 were to be subsumed under ministries as departments. The report also recommended that government’s funding of professional bodies and councils be discontinued to free funds for capital projects.
The Buhari administration gave the report more of a wide berth throughout its eight years except issuing a second white paper on it in August, 2022, but the report was not implemented until the Tinubu government dusted it last Monday for immediate implementation.
According to the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, FEC immediately set up an eight-member implementation committee and gave them a 12-week deadline “to ensure that the necessary legislative amendments, administrative amendments and administrative restructuring needed to implement the reforms are effected in an efficient manner”.
The committee is headed by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, George Akume. Other members of the committee are: the Head of the Civil Service, Attorney-General of the Federation, Director-General of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms, Special Adviser to the President on Policy Coordination and Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly. The Cabinet Affairs Office will serve as the secretariat.
The Oronsaye committee’s recommendations are quite expansive and far-reaching. They would revolutionize the federal civil service and save much funds. As a matter of fact, Oronsaye himself envisaged that over N862 billion would be saved within three years if the recommendations are faithfully implemented.
Tinubu administration’s decision to fully implement the report is pragmatic and well thought out. It is a relish that sits well with the majority of Nigerians, except Labour for obvious reasons. Even one of Tinubu’s arch rivals during the last presidential election, Peter Obi, gave the president the thumbs up for the decision.
“Implementing the report is one of the best ways to make governance efficient, cost-effective and productive,” Obi said, adding:”Being in opposition does not warrant blind and thoughtless criticisms.”
There is, however, a big lacuna that may impel the government to pause the implementation of the report. Popular human rights lawyer, Femi Falana(SAN), and ex-lawmaker, Senator Shehu Sani, both pointed out that the report is already outdated and cannot be implemented as it is unless it is updated.
Falana contended that the report does not reflect the current situation in the civil service. “Since the Goodluck Jonathan administration,” he said, “produced a White Paper on the report in 2014, the Federal Government has created more ministries, departments and agencies.”
Falana added: “Whereas the report recommended the reduction of 263 agencies to 161, the number of ministries, departments and agencies has increased to 1,316. Even the current administration has increased the number of ministries and created new agencies. To that extent, the Oronsaye report is completely outdated.”
Sani, who waxed comical and sarcastic on the issue, said most of the agencies emanated from sponsored bills at the National Assembly because the performance of the legislators is often gauged by the number of bills they are able to sponsor.
“Some of the agencies that we created are so irrelevant and useless,” Sani, who featured on Channels TV, said. He added: “If you live in Abuja today, there is hardly any street you will move to without seeing an agency you never knew before”. The senator said one way out of the lacuna is to invite the Oronsaye committee back to update their report because it is outdated.
It appears this lacuna did not occur to the FEC when they were debating the report for implementation, but we believe that the Oronsaye committee does not need to be invited back as Sani suggested. It is our view that the SGF-led implementation committee is capable of updating the report as required. Their scope of operations only needs to be expanded and their deadline extended.
However, as noted earlier, the only area of potential trouble is with the labour unions. They are raising hell over the government’s decision to implement the Oronsaye report and are already giving the authorities a roasting over it. They are roaring for a big fight ahead. And their fears of massive job losses that may attend the implementation are palpable.
The Minister of Information, Mohammed Idris, on Wednesday at a ministerial briefing in Abuja, attempted what seemed like the impossible. He tried somewhat glibly to allay the workers’ fears about the job cuts. “The whole idea(of government’s decision on the report),” he started, “is that government wants to reduce cost and improve efficiency in service delivery. It doesn’t mean that government is out to retrench workers or throw people into the labour market.”
But the minister’s assurance cut no ice with the workers. Convinced that the exercise will possibly lead to massive job cuts, the central labour has mandated its members in the public service to furnish the national secretariat with an impact analysis of the consequences of implementing the report, including job losses, changes in work load, among others.
The Trade Union Congress(TUC) has, in its case, raised a three-man committee to monitor the implementation and ensure none of its members loses his or her job. The academic staff unions too have taken umbrage at the government’s decision and poo-hooed the information minister’s assurance that workers would not be retrenched over the report.
Peter Obi, Falana and Sani also have words of caution for government in the way they handle job losses that are likely to emanate from the exercise, so as not to compound the hardship in town. Indeed, the aspect of job cuts is insuperable. The minister’s assurance that the implementation will not necessarily lead to retrenchment is very interesting. How government plans to pull off that magnitude of restructuring and rationalization in the federal civil service without cutting jobs is still to be seen.
But we think it appears near-impossible. With due respect to the honourable minister, his assurance sounds duplicitous and quite unconvincing. Everybody, including Labour, has to come to terms with the reality staring us in the face. If the report is to be fully implemented with the magnitude of agencies and departments that will be merged, scrapped and subsumed under ministries and with the larger national interests of cutting the costs of governance and enhancing civil service efficiency, some jobs have to go. You do not make an omelette, as they say, without breaking an egg.
In fact, from the analysis of the report, 102 heads of agencies/parastatals/commissio
Then, let the state governors take a cue from the Oronsaye report and, with the legislative backing of their houses of assembly, also merge, scrap and subsume overlapping and redundant agencies and parastatals where necessary in their respective states. They should also go the whole hog to curb their proclivity for profligate and outlandish spendings to save much of the extra funds now literally sloshing into their accounts from their monthly allocations for development.
Again, the level of dissipations at the National Assembly is almost insuperable. It is an octopus that has been a major drain pipe to the nation’s resources through all kinds of humongous emoluments. Therefore, the gains of implementing the Oronsaye report will be insignificant if the National Assembly remains the way it is.
It is noteworthy that the lower house has raised a committee over the Oronsaye report. That is commendable. The direction of their move is inchoate, but we recommend that the two chambers either merge, like Falana and others have admonished, or they should accede to operating henceforth on part-time basis and take only sitting allowance, like their counterparts in the United States of America, from where we copied our presidential model.
Lastly, let the local governments too study the Oronsaye report and make adjustments and tinker with their bureaucracies where necessary. It is a revolution of a sort. But unless the costs-cutting reforms cut across, we are not really there. That is the takeaway from the Oronsaye report.
