By Eze Onyekpere
The recent decision of the federal government toimplement the Stephen Oronsaye Committee report presents opportunities for good governance in Nigeria. It will be recalled that the Committee was set up by the Goodluck Jonathan administration with a mandate to reduce the cost of governance at the federal level of governance. It has been 14 years since the committee was set up and about twelve years since it submitted its report. This discourse reviews the implications of the recent presidential directive and the lessons and opportunities arising therefrom.
The starting point is to recall the mandate of the committee and the principles that guided its work. The committee was mandated tostudy and review all previous reports and records on the restructuring of federal agencies and parastatals and advise on whether they were still relevant;and examine the enabling Acts of all the federal agencies, parastatals and commissions and classify them into various sectors. Furthermore, the committee was charged to examine critically, the mandate of the existing federal agencies, parastatals and commissions and determine areas of overlap or duplication of functions and make appropriate recommendations to either restructure, merge or scrap some to eliminate such overlaps, duplications or redundancies; and toadvise on any other matter incidental to the foregoing which might be relevant to the desire of government to prune down the cost of governance.
The principles that guided the committee’s work were:the economic challenges and the need for government to make more efficient use of its resources to achieve developmental objectives and goals;the fact that Nigeria had undertaken reforms in the past;it was imperative to reform to meet the challenges of a better socio-political and economic society;there was no need to create another body to perform the functions of an already existing statutory entity. The fact that an institution was inefficient and ineffective should not warrant the creation of a new one; andthe reform would ensure efficient and effective management of government structures and functionaries to guarantee better service delivery and good governance.
The cost of governance was an issue in 2014 as much as itis an issue in 2024 and it seems that the need to reform, to prune the cost of governance is more urgent today that ten years ago. It will be recalled that the Buhari administration verbally committed to implement the committee’s recommendations but did not summon the requisite political will to see it through. Implementing the committee’s report will therefore need to take so many factors especially, new developments into consideration. These developments include the notorious fact that Nigeria is more indebted today than it was in 2014, unemployment, inflation and a devalued naira, poverty, insecurity, corruption, deteriorating indicators in education, health, water and sanitation, etc., have become very critical challenges. Beyond the foregoing, new laws enacted by the National Assembly since 2014 have created more agencies, commissions, etc. Furthermore, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration has a bloated governance structure of 48 ministers and so many special advisers and assistants.
The first point of departure is to ensure that the proposed reform will be holistic and the committee set up by the president should not use the arbitrary line of 2014 as the cut off point. Rather, it should include all agencies set up after 2014 to ensure that all agencies of government are considered in the pruning exercise. The new committee should review the recommendations of the White Paper published by the Jonathan presidency because a good number of its accepted, rejected and noted issues do not make sense for a reduction in the cost of governance.
The second point is for President Tinubu to lead by example. The bloated list of ministers and aides should be pruned. For ministers, the constitutional requirement of 37 makes sense and should be the maximum while not more than ten aides would fit the spirit of the times. The president should further ensure that pruning the cost of governance becomes an agenda of the ruling party and thereafter commends it to the governors, starting from members of his party who will be under obligation to implement their party manifesto. The cost of governance agenda should be beyond pruning personnel expenses, it should include perks of office like expensive SUVs, accommodation, travels and other expenditure heads. This is an opportunity to buy made in Nigeria, launch and implement the equivalent of Obasanjo’s low-profile regime of the late 1980’s.
The third point is a consideration that any reform exercise will eventually involve the legislature, it is imperative that the legislature considers reforms from the angle of its work. The executive and the legislature must be working in tandem for effective cost pruning. It will be ridiculous for the executive to be recommending mergers of existing agencies while the legislature relishes in creating new ones at every opportunity. Moreover, any merger or abolition of an existing agency established by law will require an amendment or repeal of existing laws to become effective. Furthermore, this presents an opportunity for the legislature to set up a proper legislative budget office that will review bills and determine the cost to the treasury of their implementation before passage of the bill. Such determination will also play in the mind of legislators during debates and positions in support of or against the enactment of the bill. Alternatively, new duties provided in new legislation can be assigned to existing agencies.
The fourth point is against the background of the increasing poverty and diminished standard of living for the majority of the population, special measures should be taken to ensure that job loss and retrenchments do not affect poor civil and public servant who earn peanuts. The idea of throwing someone who earns one hundred to four hundred thousand into the job market on the pretext of reforms will be callous and insensitive. How many (hundreds or thousands) of such persons will match the legal and illegal take from the treasury of a minister, distinguished senator or the senate president? The government must cut the fat from where it is fullest. There should be no job loss for this cadre of workers rather the fat should be cut from board members, chief executive, etc., while the normal everyday hardworking official is moved to the new merged agencies. If in extreme cases, this cadre of officers have to leave service, their separation entitlements should be very generous and made available within a few weeks of disengagement. It should not be treated like President Tinubu’s palliatives that will take for ever to come after the Eagle Square announcement that fuel subsidy is gone.
The fifth is that it is imperative for the reforms to have an agency saddled with the task of determining the appropriate staffing of every government agency based on their mandate. The work schedule of this agency should be continuous so that boards and management do not overstaff agencies.
In the final analysis, reducing the cost of governance in a fiscally challenged Nigeria will be a step in the right direction. But it needs to be a holistic exercise, carried out in good faith and leadership at the highest level should lead the exercise by example.