By Chinelo Obogo
Thirteen months after President Bola Tinubu promised to implement the Steve Orasanye Report, a 2012 blueprint designed to ensure fiscal prudence, the document lays idle as hope for implementation dims.
Rather than cutting back on expenditure, public spending continues to surge, with bureaucratic redundancies and inflated costs straining the nation’s finances and raising concerns over economic sustainability.
With a greater portion of the population languishing in multidimensional poverty, economic experts insist that the best time to streamline government agencies by scrapping duplication and wastes is now in order to save the economy from the threats of ruin.
On February 26, 2024, President Tinubu and the Federal Executive Council (FEC) agreed to implement the recommendations of the Steve Oronsaye panel report, which identified duplication, inefficiencies and unnecessary financial burdens in the operations of federal ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs).
The Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, announced the President’s decision in a post on X (formerly Twitter), saying: “Twelve years after the Steve Oronsaye panel submitted its report on restructuring and rationalising the federal government’s parastatals and agencies and a white paper issued two years after, President Tinubu and the Federal Executive Council today decided to implement the report. Many agencies will be scrapped, and many others will be merged, to pave the way for a leaner government.”
This decision came over a decade after the Steve Orasanye panel submitted its findings in 2012 to then President Goodluck Jonathan and two years after a white paper was issued.
The aim of the Oronsaye panel was to streamline governance by restructuring the MDAs. Despite President Tinubu’s promise to address these issues, no tangible progress has been made. Instead, the size of the government continues to grow, contradicting the report’s goal of creating a leaner and more efficient government. In fact, President Tinubu’s administration increased the number of ministers to 48, the highest since 1999 and between February 2024 and March 2025, many new agencies were approved by the presidency including the Ministry of Livestock Resources, which was established on July 9, 2024.
In 2012, Nigeria had 541 MDAs and by 2025, this number had increased to 1,316, with 929 MDAs included in the federal budgeting structure. The Steve Oronsaye-led panel found that out of the 541 MDAs existing at the time, only 163 were necessary and recommended reducing the number of statutory agencies from 263 to 161.
The report proposed merging 52 agencies. For example, it recommended that the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) and the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN)/Voice of Nigeria (VON) be merged into the Federal Broadcasting Corporation of Nigeria, while the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) should be merged into the Communication Regulatory Authority of Nigeria (CRAN).
It also recommended that the Code of Conduct Bureau, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) be merged into a single Anti-Corruption Commission.
The panel recommended that 14 agencies be reverted to departments within federal ministries. For instance, the Debt Management Office (DMO) should become an extra-ministerial department under the Ministry of Finance, while the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) should be transferred to the Ministry of Communication Technology.
The report called for the scrapping of 38 agencies, including the Public Complaints Commission, the National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP), the Utilities Charges Commission (UCC), the National Agency for the Control of HIV/AIDS (NACA), the National Economic Intelligence Committee (NEIC), and the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA), with its enabling law repealed.
Over the years, the proliferation of MDAs and the misallocation of resources have increased the cost of governance in Nigeria, putting severe pressure on the nation’s finances. The country’s budget has undergone changes such that projects are now allocated to agencies outside their mandates.
An analysis by BudgIT Nigeria of the 2024 federal budget laid bare the extent of these anomalies, revealing that over 2,558 projects, valued at ₦624 billion, were assigned to agencies beyond their core mandates. Notable examples include the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), tasked with developing entrepreneurship and small businesses, was allocated ₦5 billion to procure and distribute official vehicles to traditional rulers, a function that has no bearing and is completely unrelated to its purpose. Similarly, the Nigeria Institute of Oceanography and Marine Research, whose primary focus should be on maritime studies and oceanographic research, received ₦2.32 billion to construct a 3.5-kilometer road, a project which is outside its scope.
The misallocation continued as seen in the ₦500 million allocated to the Federal Polytechnic, Ukana in Akwa Ibom State for the construction of boreholes, not within its host state, but in neighboring Cross River State. The Federal Cooperative College, Oji River, initially proposed a 2024 budget of ₦12.8 billion. However, upon review by the National Assembly, the approved budget was increased to ₦103.6 billion, a difference of ₦90 billion, which included the insertion of 419 projects. Similarly, the Federal Cooperative College, Ibadan, submitted a proposed budget of ₦1.5 billion, only for the National Assembly to approve ₦46.9 billion after incorporating 182 additional projects worth ₦45.36 billion, a 3,000% increase over the institution’s original request.