*Laments failure to implement Oronsaye Report on civil service restructuring
Olawale Ajimotokan in Abuja
The federal government has lamented that its failure to implement the report of the Committee on the Restructuring and Rationalisation of Federal Government Parastatals, Agencies and Commissions, otherwise known as the Oronsaye Report was costing the country so much.
The Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Mr. Boss Mustapha made the outcry yesterday, during the inauguration of the sub-committees on government Whitepaper and review of parastatals, agencies and commissions that were created following the submission of the Oronsaye report.
Mustapha, who was represented at the inauguration by the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Dr Mrs Folasade Yemi-Esan, noted that cost was escalating for every delay that the implementation of the Oronsaye report suffers.
“This is further worsened by the fact that immediately after the report was released, parastatals and agencies billed for mergers or scrapping began developing means of further entrenching themselves as a major expenditure source to government. Furthermore, new agencies were also created to compound the situation,” Mustapha said.
He said the country has continued to suffer under a daily increasing weight of a high cost of governance borne by high personnel and overhead costs to the detriment of having adequate resources for development projects.
The SGF said the country has for many years been struggling to make sure that at least 30 per cent of its annual budget goes into capital projects.
He recalled that the Oronsaye committee which was constituted on August, 2011, and which submitted its report on April 16, 2012, recommended that of the 541 statutory and non-statutory federal government parastatals, agencies and commissions, 263 statutory agencies should be reduced to 161 while 38 agencies should be abolished.
It also recommended that 52 agencies should be merged while 14 should revert back to departments in the ministries.
He, however, lamented that after the White Paper on the report was issued and published in March 2014 and the White Paper implementation Committee headed by Senator Anyim Pius Anyim that was inaugurated in May 2014, for a number of reasons, premised on political expediency, the White paper not only rejected many of the recommendations, it also merely noted an equally greater number of others.
The SGF said most of those recommendations accepted by the Committee were not implemented.
He averred that the underlying principles for restructuring and rationalising government agencies has become necessary now than when the initial committee was constituted in 2011.
He gave those reasons to include economic challenges and the need for government to manage its increasingly scarce resources required for efficient and effective management of government structures and functionaries to guarantee better service delivery and good governance.
He said the need for cutting down the cost of governance cannot be more compelling than now especially in the face of dwindling revenue plus the need to make the federal government less of a cost centre and more of a revenue generator.
The committee to review the Oronsaye Report and White paper on Restructuring and rationalisation of Federal Government Parastatals, Agencies and Commissions is to be headed by a former Head of Service, Mr. Goni Bukar Aji, while former Head of Service and Minister for Housing, Ms. Amal Pepple is chair the Committee to Review New Agencies created after the Submission of the above report from 2014 to date.
The two sub-committees with ranging terms of reference including to study and analyse the findings and recommendations contained in the Oronsaye report as well as the ensuing White Paper and to determine the need for the existence or otherwise of the new agencies/commissions/parastatals in the light of the of increasing cost of governance, removing superfluity in functions of agencies would submit their report for the consideration of government within six weeks.
