By Disun Amosun
Regulators and operators in the country’s Art, Culture, Tourism and Hospitality industry on Tuesday while tactically supporting the present administration’s desire to restructure federal Agencies in order to ensure the efficiency have a caveat that the exercise must be undertaken with every sense of professionalism and purpose.
This came to light as the House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee set up to investigate the duplication of functions of agencies of the FG interacted with heads of four such related agencies in on the matter.
The Agencies are the National Commission for Museums and Monuments, National Council for Arts and Culture NCAC, National Gallery for Art and the Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation.
Ad-hoc committee Chairman Rep Victor Danzaria in an opening renarks noted that the high cost of governance in the country coupled with revenue challenges in government finances, raises serious concern in the Legislature, thus making restructuring of government agencies providing related services indispensable.
DG NCAC Otunba Olusegun Runsewe in his presentation agreed that in line with international best practices, related agencies with overlapping functions are best synergised the o reduce over head costs.
He however called for stringent considerations by the House in arriving at its final decision in order no to create lacunas in the smooth running of the industry.
On his part, the DG National Commission for Museums and Monuments Prof Abubakar Tijani was more cautious when asked about the mergers of related government agencies within the industry and said he will rather remain non committal and leave the decision to the House Committee.
