The prevailing situation in the country calls for a thorough reappraisal of the existing economic template, with a view to having sound fiscal public management during a period of depression. It is worrisome to note that Nigeria, reputed to be the sixth largest exporter of crude oil in the world, has over 70 per cent of its estimated 170 million population tagged as poor and living below the United Nations poverty threshold. It is in this part of the world that a chunk of our national resources is channeled into running a government that is unduly large and cumbersome to manage and leaving behind, minimal percentage for the execution of capital projects and the real sector of the economy. This should not be allowed to continue.
It is in my dear country that we continue to promote a bogus and corrupt system that is averse to development simply because we keep consuming and producing very little. Our country is a nation that runs a bogus bicameral legislature that is notorious for being the highest remunerated in the world, where the embarrassing high rate of unemployment is alarming. As a way out of the quagmire of over-bloated bureaucracy and excessive spending on recurrent expenditure that have constituted a clog in the wheels of the nation’s progress, the Goodluck Jonathan administration came up with the idea of setting up the Presidential Committee on the Rationalisation and Restructuring of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies, under the leadership of a retired federal civil servant and former Head of Service of the Federation, Stephen Oronsaye, which at the end of its painstaking assignment, recommended the scrapping and merging of 220 out the existing 541 government agencies.
It would be recalled that the Oronsaye committee had proposed the reduction of the size of government to a manageable level and streamlining of the operations of its various organs for cost reduction and efficient service delivery. Not only did the Federal Executive Council meet to deliberate on the report; a White Paper was produced while the Adamu Fika-led committee reviewed the report to ensure that the government was toeing the right path to economic prosperity.
Unfortunately, the Federal Government appears to have dumped the report, which had recommended a drastic reduction in the number of government Ministries, Departments and Agencies going by the provision of the Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy that seem to suggest that the duplicating and money-gulping MDAs were still provided for in the budgets.
This development is nothing but a clear demonstration of government’s lack of political will to implement policies that can impact positively on the economy.
The two weak reasons that had been given for the inability of government to implement the findings of the Oronsaye report are: the money to be saved from the exercise is negligible and does not worth the stress and secondly, the legal framework is not in place for its implementation.
Certainly, the reasons are not convincing to any discernible mind because these MDAs have continued to be a source of wastage, economic burden, sheer duplication of bureaucracies and conduit to waste public resources. The recent disclosure over the implementation of both the Integrated Personal and Payroll Information System confirms the veracity of the allegations of leakages and corruption in the public service, especially going by the recent disclosure that over 23,000 ghost workers were discovered in the federal civil service alone!
Then, why do we need to waste money and precious time setting-up a committee when its outcome will never be implemented, just the way the Oronsaye report is turning out to be?
While the detailed work of the committee, which cuts across virtually every aspect of Nigerian public administration, deserves commendation, a cursory look at the education component of the report that could bail out this critical sector from some of its challenges when implemented. These include compulsory and free education from primary to junior secondary schools for all school-age children in the country; the need for stakeholders, such as the National Council on Education to make tangible efforts at revamping the fallen standard of education; the imperative for state governors to be engaged through the National Economic Council of State to drive the desired change process; professionalism of teaching; need for practising teachers to undergo in-service training to enable them garner renewable teaching license, among others.
The report also made a case for an appropriation of funds for the management and development of schools that should be allocated to them directly rather than being ‘warehoused’ at the Federal Ministry of Education; Universal Basic Education Commission and State Universal Basic Education Board; the need for the restoration of a strong, aggressive, focused Inspectorate Division that would facilitate the improvement and maintenance of standards in service delivery, just to mention a few. Because of the numerous advantages inherent in the report, there is the need for a revisit.
Unfortunately, many observers believe that the government’s posturing could mean that the report might have reached the end-of-the-road, meaning that we are still far from overcoming our perennial and wasteful spending on bureaucracy.
The reality on ground in the nation calls for a fiscal philosophy that would vigorously tackle corruption, waste, inefficiency, poor governance and inequitable distribution of wealth. Hence, implementing the report is capable of returning the economy to the path of restoration and rejuvenation.
The current economic turbulence that the nation is experiencing makes the report handy and handy. It would be recalled that the nation’s 2016 troubled fiscal budget of N6.08 trillion is premised on an oil benchmark of $38 per barrel, N1.84 trillion borrowing, revenue projection of N3.86 trillion, deficit of N2.22 trillion and a debt-to-Gross Domestic Product ratio of 2.16 per cent.
Therefore, it is high time the Oronsaye report is implemented because many of the MDAs are not only drain pipes on the economy but were set up merely for political reasons. The money that will be saved from the scrapping and merging of these agencies could rather be used to set up industries and provide jobs in each of the geo-political zones of the country. These industries should be made to be self-sustaining without necessarily expecting yearly budgetary allocations. On the fear being nursed that implementing the report would bring about mass sacking of workers, it should be noted that bonafide employees of the affected MDAs would simply been redeployed to the relevant offices without job losses. It is only hoped that the Federal Government would set the ball rolling in the implementation of this task. This assignment, though appears daunting, is achievable with determination. That is where the Muhammadu Buhari government should make a difference.
PUNCH
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