From the 541 agencies in 2011, parochial and self-serving legislations and political expediency have ensured the reckless accretion of more MDAs 11 years after the initial move was made to reduce the cost of governance.
Since 2011, efforts of successive governments to hit the bull's eye in the implementation of the Steve Oronsaye-led panel report on the rationalisation of 541 Federal Government agencies have hit a brick wall. Each regime has been entangled with the proliferation of ministries, departments and agencies without any consideration of their utilitarian and cost imperatives.
Now, in the twilight of President Muhammadu Buhari's administration, tentative steps have been taken to enforce the recommendation of the panel with the forwarding of Government's White Paper report to the National Assembly for legislative action. This is coming five years after the regime had reconstituted a White Paper Implementation Committee chaired by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation. As was usual with the Goodluck Jonathan administration on policy issues, it shied away from carrying the implementation through. Again, the contradictory impulses of Buhari's government on the subject intrigue not a few. However, the headwind inherent in the N20.51 trillion Appropriation Bill for 2023, which the National Assembly received last week, with almost an N11 trillion deficit, should compel all arms of government concerned to action.
From the 541 agencies in 2011, parochial and self-serving legislations and political expediency have ensured the reckless accretion of more MDAs 11 years after the initial move was made to reduce the cost of governance. As the MDAs overlap in their functions, with costs running into trillions of naira, the report recommends that 263 statutory agencies should be reduced to 161; 38 need to be abolished; just as 52 would be merged; while 14 would revert to being departments in ministries. One media tally put what Nigeria could save if this is holistically implemented at N3.7 trillion.
The drama that may underpin the implementation process came to the fore in the House of Representatives recently when some of its members displayed how unreasonable they could be when issues of utmost public interest are before them. They vehemently opposed a move to place an embargo on the approval of new universities. The Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, wanted a halt to the process as the underfunding of existing ones caused an eight-month strike by Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). The National Assembly has created dozens of new tertiary institutions over the past decade. That is why the Speaker's colleagues, including principal officers of the House, revolted against the idea of stopping the creation of new ones. Pronto, the Speaker was reminded of the enormous pressure their constituents put on them as legislators to attract such institutions as part of their constituency projects.
Incredulously, Gbajabiamila massaged their egos by urging them to "bring as many bills as possible." These theatrics were provoked by the Second Reading of the Bill for an Act to establish a Federal University of Transportation, Daura - the home town of President Buhari - in Katsina State. The triumph of parochialism over reason and patriotism had also seen the Buhari regime approve the creation of universities for the Army, Navy, Air Force and the Police, when the Nigeria Defence Academy (NDA) and National Defence College, Abuja exist - all with university status. The National Assembly, too, has the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS), which is producing degrees.
With the exception of the NDA and Defence College, a more focused administration with avid interest in value for money would not have acquiesced to the setting up of these universities that lack basic facilities. At best, the dream would have provided opportunities for expanding the faculties of some existing 49 federal universities to offer degree courses to members of the armed services, since academic programmes of these sectoral universities are in no way different from those of orthodox universities.
The whole set up is laughable. How will the House approbate and reprobate at the same time, with the 63 bills before it for the establishment of more universities, colleges of education, and polytechnics? Out of these bills, 26 are for federal universities and 33 for colleges of education, agriculture, health, and forestry institutions. A special committee set up by the House is presently conducting status enquiries on the agencies, to determine their relevance and self-financing capabilities, in response to the demands of the White Paper.
Evidence from the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) clearly indicates that universities, colleges and polytechnics are not filling up existing admission spaces. In 2020, for instance, JAMB said that 400,000 university admission slots were not utilised. Only 551,553 candidates were offered admission. For colleges of education, only 47,920 students were admitted out of 235,240 admission slots available. This apparent disjuncture between admission spaces and utilisation necessitated Ishaq Oloyede's counsel to schools to give admissions to candidates seeking offers in faculties of Agriculture and Education, even if they scored zero in the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME). It is therefore, nonsensical for anyone to think of establishing more public institutions of higher learning.
Synergy between the executive and legislative arms is required in governance. It should be demonstrated even more now in this urgent task of reducing the size of the MDAs for effectiveness, cost saving and service delivery. The Senate should actualise its avowed support of the implementation of the Oronsaye report, "to save the economy from self-inflicted bleeding", as the chairman of its Finance Committee, Solomon Olamilekan Adeola had said. For too long, Nigeria has allowed irresponsibility and personal interests to shape the public space, leading to the unacceptable norm of government business being seen as nobody's business. What will indicate seriousness in the present effort to streamline the bloated federal bureaucracy is by ensuring that the 2023 budget reflects the stated desire that no financial allocation should be given to those agencies to be phased out.
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The overlapping functions of these agencies could be gleaned from the roles of the National Emergency Management Agency and National Commission for Refugees; National Institute of Social and Economic Research and National Research Development Fund. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and the Code of Conduct Bureau are agencies with duplicated responsibilities. So are the National Boundary Commission and Border Communities Development Agency. With its inertia, having offices of the National Orientation Agency (NOA) in 774 local government areas has become irrelevant. What the Nomadic Education Commission does in this age deserves critical appraisal. There are many more of such government agencies.
Early this October, the Ethics and Integrity Compliance Score Card 2022 disclosed that 25 agencies operate without legal instruments for their existence. The EICSC, an audit watchdog, is domiciled in the ICPC. A governance template that allows such rogue agencies to operate for years undetected, gives fillip to treasury looting, bloated workforces and the ghost worker syndrome. The Federal Government had earlier saved N220 billion from payroll fraud orchestrated by syndicates using 70,000 ghost personnel.
Concerns for a productive workforce informed the 1999 Ahmed Joda-led panel on restructuring of the bureaucracy, which sadly, did not see the light of day. As a result, the unending trifling with the Oronsaye report should give way to its implementation, if the current mess in the civil service is to abate.
