Newsonspot reports that President Bola Tinubu on Monday, February 26, ordered the implementation of the Stephen Oronsaye panel’s report on the reform of the civil service, it is recalled that the recommendations of the committee as regards the abolition, reduction, merger, and revision of some MDAs.
The Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, revealed this to State House Correspondents after Monday’s Federal Executive Council meeting at the Aso Rock Villa, Abuja.
“So in a very bold move today, this administration, under the leadership of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, consistent again with his courage to take very far-reaching decisions in the interest of Nigeria, has taken a decision to implement the so-called Oronsaye Report.
“Now, what that means is that a number of agencies, commissions, and some departments have actually been scrapped. Some have been modified, and marked while others have been subsumed. Others, of course, have also been moved from some ministries to others where the government feels they will operate better,” said Idris.
Consequently, the President constituted a committee to implement the mergers, scrapping and relocations within 12 weeks, said Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Policy Coordination, Mrs Hadiza Bala-Usman.
Submitted in 2012, the Oronsaye report on public sector reforms revealed that there are 541 – statutory and non-statutory – Federal Government parastatals, commissions, and agencies.
A year earlier, the then President Goodluck Jonathan had set up the Presidential Committee on Restructuring and Rationalisation of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies, under the leadership of former Head of Civil Service, Stephen Oronsaye.
The 800-page report recommended that 263 of the statutory agencies be slashed to 161; 38 agencies be scrapped; 52 be merged and 14 be reverted to departments in various ministries.
The report also recommends that the law establishing the National Salaries and Wages Commission be repealed and its functions taken over by the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Responsibility Commission.
It advised the FG to merge the nation’s top three anti-corruption agencies – the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission and the Code of Conduct Bureau.
The rationale was that there were “duplications and overlaps in the mandates of many parastatals and agencies…without regard to existing laws and, in some cases, out-rightly replicating extant laws.”
The recommendations of the Oronsaye Report bordered on historic weaknesses in the country’s public service. President Muhammadu Buhari’s response to the report, however, came in November 2021, when it instituted two committees under two former Heads of Service of the Federation. The first was to review the Oronsaye Report while the other was to interrogate all new establishments set up after 2014.
Highlights of the Oronsaye Report:
Oronsaye Committee had far-reaching recommendations on MDAs that should be abolished, scrapped, those to be merged and those to become self-funding, thereby freeing funds for the much-needed capital projects across the country.
– 929 MDAs currently in the Federal Government budgeting structure
– The report identified 541 Parastatals, Commissions, and FG Agencies.
– Recommends 38 Federal Agencies to be abolished – Public Complaints Commission, National Poverty Eradication Programme, Utilities Charges Commission, National Agency for the Control of HIV/AIDS, National Intelligence Committee, etc.
– 14 agencies to be fused into ministries where they were created e.g Debt Management Office to the Federal Ministry of Finance
– Public Health Department back to the Federal Ministry of Health
– National Information Technology Development Agency to be fused into the Ministry of Communication Technology
– Reduction of statutory agencies from 263 to 161
– 52 institutions to be merged: NTA, FRCN & VON into the Federal Broadcasting Corporation of Nigeria (FBCN)
– NCC & NBC into Communication Regulatory Authority of Nigeria (CRAN);
An earlier analysis by SUNDAY PUNCH revealed that the Nigerian Government could save over N241bn if the report is duly implemented.
