WHY NIGERIA SHOULD IMPLEMENT THE ORONSAYE REPORT NOW

Mrs. Zainab Ahmed. Minister for Finance and Budget Planning. Photo Credit: Twitter handle
Economies across the world have become heavily impacted by the effect of a ravaging pandemic. The severity of this differs across the nations of the earth. One thing we cannot take out is that Africa with its over-dependence on America, Europe, and Asia for everything beginning from loans and capital financing to manufacturing and importation of finished (processed) goods will suffer major losses like her benefactors.
Nigeria like many other African countries has over the years come up with agencies, parastatals, and ministries that thrived through ineptitude and encouraged a culture of waste. This gave rise to the proliferation of MDAs built from a metamorphosis of agencies, created with the aim of giving credibility to bodies that hitherto were none existent.

Currently, Nigeria boasts of over 700 parastatals with many displaying overlapping functions. The resultant effect of so many duplicate agencies on the fragile economy of Nigeria is a high overhead cost in governance and further complication of the financial burden of the nation.

The Goodluck Ebele Jonathan administration had inaugurated the seven-man Presidential Committee on Restructuring and Rationalization of Federal Government Parastatals headed by Stephen Oronsaye in august 18, 2011. The committee which submitted its findings on April 16, 2012, stated major cost-cutting recommendations to the government.

Eight years on, in the face of a financial collapse brought on by the onset of the COVID 19 pandemic, by reason of a dip in crude prices, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has had to take the necessary long-awaited look into the Oronsaye report with the aim of implementing in part it's recommendations.

So How Does This Affect Nigeria?

The financial repercussions of the COVID 19 pandemic opened the world to the painful realities of what happens in the absence of international trade, closed borders and the constricting effects being an isolated economy could have on a nation. Never before had the benefits of global trade been more highlighted. The closure of international borders and the resultant drop in the price of crude oil, the main revenue source of government has forced it to look inwards and look at avenues to cutting the cost of governance.
According to the Oronsaye report, the rationalization of agencies,...would have human dimensions and cost implications. The report pointed out areas of overlap in duties, among agencies and recommend the merging of 52 agencies of government, abolition of about 38 agencies, and even reversal of 14 other agencies to departments in relevant ministries.

If put into practice, the nation can save much more when it cuts unnecessary fundings of professional bodies as is the case at present, and reduce overhead cost as agencies with overlapping functions would be merged or subsumed in another.
For example, the committee among others recommended that Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF), an agency with the mandate of developing indigenous human capacity and petroleum technology to meet the needs of the oil and gas industry, be subsumed under Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), while the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), and Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) be merged into one consolidated agency. Although not all of the recommendations have been accepted, citizens look forward to the increase in national savings as a result of lesser spendings.

Consequences of implementing the Oronsaye Report

The excitement in the air with the announcement by the Finance Minister and budget planning Mrs. Zainab Ahmed on the government's stance on the adoption of certain recommendations of the Oronsaye report has been received with trepidation as many fear for the fate of employees of the agencies that will be affected.

Citizens can only hope that there will be no job cuts as the nation already struggles with a high level of unemployment. With more money saved there will be a lesser need for external borrowing to fund government expenditure. And excesses be channeled to creating a suitable environment for SMEs to thrive and boost the economy.

The legislative arm of government in support of government moves should study the Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) of bills on its floor aimed at the creation of new agencies. This is particularly important as the nation can no longer carry the hemorrhaging impact of huge financial spendings on agencies with duplicating functions. Nor can it continue to encourage the selfish motives of people, businesses or sectors lobbying for the passage of such bills. Hopefully, the nation of Nigeria will be better off and can channel funds for the good of society.