By Emmanuel Obisue
In the last week of February, President Bola Tinubu ordered the full implementation of the 2012 800-pager Report by former Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Stephen Oronsaye. Tinubu also announced the merging, subsuming, scraping and relocation of several agencies of government.
The President’s directive was conveyed by Mohammed Idris, Minister of Information and National Orientation to State House Correspondents after the February 26 Federal Executive Council, FEC meeting at the Aso Rock Villa, Abuja.
The direct implication of this, is that a number of government agencies, commissions, and departments have been scrapped, while others have been modified, marked and subsumed. “Others, of course, have also been moved from some ministries to others where the government feels they will operate better,” Idris said.
As a matter of urgency, Tinubu immediately constituted a committee to implement the mergers, scrapping and relocations, and report back within 12 weeks.
*12 Years After*
Officially submitted in 2012, the Oronsaye Report on public sector reforms revealed the existence of 541 — statutory and non-statutory — Federal Government parastatals, commissions, and agencies. To save cost for government and eradicate duplicity, it 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.
According to analysts, over N200bn is expected to be saved if the report is duly implemented. This comes after attempts by former presidents Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari to act on the report. Pilot Glamour recalls that in 2011 Jonathan had set up the Presidential Committee on Restructuring and Rationalisation of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies, under the leadership of Oronsaye as Head of Service.
The Oronsaye Report proposed a leaner government by merging some agencies and scrapping many others. Infact Oronsaye had said that if the committee’s recommendation was implemented almost immediately, the federal government would have saved over N862bn between 2012 and 2015.
*Looming Job Loss*
Statistics according to researchers from Penn and OpenAI in the US found that 80 percent of workforce will have at least 10 percent of their tasks impacted by Artificial Intelligence GPTs. GPTs, also known as generative pre-trained transformers, can generate human-sounding responses to a multitude of prompts and are proficient at writing, synthesizing text, coding, among other human tasks.
Research has shown that by 2040, at least 80 percent of work currently performed by humans will be done by machines and technologies. Thus, there may be lesser need for human efforts. No fewer than 102 top government officials are at the risk of losing their jobs following Tinubu’s directive to implement the Orosanye Report.
It appears that Tinubu is moving to reposition Nigeria for the new realities, away from remaining stuck in the cave of manual and inefficient processes done by humans.
As institutions are merged, new and streamlined administrative procedures will also be needed to achieve an agile and effective service delivery. The new development is a rare opportunity to rebrand and reposition service delivery through more e-government rollout and emphasis on value for money.
While some may argue that the Orasanye Report itself is outdated as operational processes across agencies since 2012 have changed, and even Orasanye himself has since been prosecuted for corruption, it seems that the Tinubu government is rather dealing with the Report in the message and not the messenger. It’s about cutting the cost of governance beyond rhetorics.
With too many agencies overlapping in funtions, a full audit, capturing biometric features of staff, as well as the discontinuation of government funding of professional bodies/councils is paramount. N124.8bn would be saved from agencies proposed for abolition; about N100.6bn from agencies proposed for mergers; about N6.6bn from professional bodies; N489.9bn from universities; N50.9bn from polytechnics; N32.3bn from colleges of education and N616m from boards of federal medical centres.
*Affected Agencies*
As earlier suggested in the Jonathan committee, agencies that may be affected if the Orasanye Report is implemented, include the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, ICPC, and Federal Road Safety Commission, FRSC.
Other agencies cited doing overlapping functions are the Nigerian Communication Satellite Limited, the National Broadcasting Commission and the Nigeria Communications Commission in the area of frequency allocation.
Also, the Universal Basic Education Commission, Nomadic Education Commission, and National Mass Literacy Commission are performing overlapping functions and should be brought under one body.
It is also believed that the Nigerian Television Authority, NTA, Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria and the Voice of Nigeria should be under a single management.
After the committee’s report, the White paper committee set up by Jonathan’s administration rejected most of the recommendations, while those accepted were not implemented.
*Full Details Of Affected Agencies As Directed By Tinubu*
The largely talked about need for the Nigerian Government to cut down on its cost of governance, as well as strategic public service reforms starts here. Below are details of affected agencies:
1. National Human Rights Commission to swallow Public Complaints Commission.
2. Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate, PTAD to be scrapped and functions to be taken over by Federal Ministry of Finance.
3. NEMA and National Commission for Refugees to be fused to become National Emergency and Refugee Management Commission.
4. Border Communities Development Agency to become a department under National Boundary Commission.
5. National Agency for the Control of Aids and the National Centre for Disease Control to be merged.
6. SERVICOM to become a department under the Bureau for Public Service Reform, BPSR.
7. NALDA to return to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security.
8. Federal Ministry of Science to supervise a new agency that combines NCAM, NASENI and PRODA.
9. National Commission for Museums and Monuments and National Gallery of Arts to become one entity that will be known as National Commission for Museums, Monuments and Gallery of Arts.
10. National Theatre to be merged with National Troupe.
11. Directorate of Technical Cooperation in Africa and Directorate of Technical Aid Corp to be merged under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
12. Nigerians in Diaspora Commission to become an agency under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
13. Federal Radio Corporation and Voice of Nigeria to be one entity to be known as Federal Broadcasting Corporation of Nigeria.
14. National Biotechnology Development Agency, NABDA and National Centre for Genetic Resources and Biotechnology to be emerged into an agency to be known as National Biotechnology Research and Development Agency, NBRDA.
15. National Institute for Leather Science Technology and National Institute for Chemical Technology to become one agency.
16. Nigeria Natural Medicine Development Agency and National Institute of Pharmaceutical Research and Development to become one agency.
17. The National Metallurgical Development Centre and National Metallurgical Training Institute will be merged.
18. National Institute for Trypanosomiasis to be subsumed under Institute of Veterinary Research in Vom, Jos.
19. The Niger Delta Power Holding Company to be relocated to the Ministry of Power.
20. The National Agricultural Land Development Agency to be relocated to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security.
21. The National Blood Service Commission to be converted into an agency and relocated to the Ministry of Health.
