By Aaron Ossai
House of Representatives Adhoc Committee to review the duplication of government agencies has suggested that the Administrative Staff College of Nigeria be merged with the Public Service Institute of Nigeria.
The Committee, headed by Hon Victor Danzaria which said that the suggestion was due to the overlapping function of both agencies explained that it was costing the government a lot of money to maintain agencies with similar responsibilities.
The Chairman of the Committee said this when Director General of ASCON, Mrs Cecilia Gayya, appeared before it.
Also the DG of the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization, Olueabunmi Amao, appeared before the Committee.
“Counter productivity of established agencies is a fact that a lot of agencies led to a lot of loan we always approve as a National Assembly to maintain the organizations. This Adhoc Committee is to look at the productivity and the service delivery of these agencies.
“Another mandate of this committee is to ascertain root cause analysis of the regular bickering among agencies making government to keep spending money on them.
“There are agencies of government that don’t have enabling act and yet government still spends money on them. It is tough for this county to keep these agencies while we keep borrowing money to maintain them.
“Another mandate is to establish areas of mergers, synergies and justification of existence. The truth is that even though you may have your enabling act, this Adhoc Committee would determine whether it should be repealed, amended or taken away.
“The justification of the existence of your agencies we got have to hear from you. If the Service delivery is not there, if Nigeria is not gaining from the agency, why are they existing. We cannot continue to keep borrowing money to maintain most of these agencies that we feel need to be merged or taken away”, he stated.
The Director General of ASCON, Mrs Cecilia Gayya, had earlier said the agency overlaps with PSIN in areas including training, consultancy and research.
She said while ASCON has an Act backing it, the PSIN do not have.
She, however said the two institutions could exist side by side adding that they overlap in practice but not in law.
She therefore called for a review the ASCON Act to broaden its mandate.
