No will, therefore, the shuffle

Here we go again. Problems identified. Solutions sought through a committee of experts. Solutions proffered by a committee of experts. Solutions ignored. Problems continue. It is the famous Nigerian shuffle. Here is one of the latest instances.

President Goodluck Jonathan, obviously worried by the myriads of federal government agencies, some of which are ill-advised duplications of existing agencies, and the rising cost of governance, decided to do something about them. In August 2011, he appointed a committee headed by Steve Oronsaye, former head of service of the federation, to look into the problems and advise him on what should be done about them. Oronsaye was not unaware of the problems that these agencies constitute for the government and the country. They are part of the many drainpipes that drain our national financial and other resources. 

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The committee duly carried out its assignment and submitted its report and informed recommendations to the government less than one year later in April 2012. It made some surprisingly radical recommendations, some of which were the reduction of the number of MDAs from 263 to 161, the scrapping of 38 agencies, the merger of 52 agencies and the reversion of 18 agencies to departments in some federal ministries. 

Then the shuffle began, first with the appointment of a committee headed by Mohammed Adoke, the then attorney-general and minister of justice, to draft a white paper on the recommendations of the Oronsaye report. The committee was inaugurated sometime in 2014. The length of time it took the government to act on it showed that it had begun to drag its feet, something quite common to every federal administration in the country. 

It was not surprising that the committee, according to a Daily Trust story in its issue of October 17, 2022, rejected most of the recommendations by the Oronsaye committee. As one character in a play by the Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw, said, “The world with this side up is the world with the right side up.” Leave well alone, appeared to be the stand of the Adoke committee and invariably shared by the Jonathan administration. I am sure if the former president knew that the Oronsaye committee would be so radical in its recommendations, he would have advised himself not to set it up. He did not implement the white paper. 

The Buhari administration then stepped into the void. The Buhari administration set up two committees in November 2121: one, to review the white paper on the Oronsaye report and the other to review new parastatals and commissions created between 2012 and 2021. President Muhammadu Buhari said of the work of the two committees: “I am aware that the review is about to be completed. While some may complain about the length of time it has taken thus far, the outcome of the various review teams would lead to some fundamental changes in the structure of our civil service and as such, it must be subjected to rigorous review and scrutiny before presentation and implementation.”

The shuffle entered a new phase. The federal government set up another committee in July this year to review the white paper on the Oronsaye report, thus indicating that the shuffle is not about to end soon. The government will continue to dance to its own shuffle. Daily Trust issue quoted earlier, reported that “despite the white paper, the ‘axed’ agencies get N226 billion in (the) 2023” federal government budget. 

Why does almost every attempt by government to do something radically different to institute a workable system end this way? The answer lies in a four-letter English word, will. Lack of will is not just the bane but the curse of our stunted national development. It forces the government to engage in the unproductive labour of frequent shuffles that are inimical to the necessary and critical changes in how governments at national and sub-national levels should improve on how they do their business. 

You are not hearing it from me that if federal government shelves were human beings, we would hear their loud groans under the weight of reports of committees, administrative, judicial, and other panels, each set up by government in response to problems that needed to be solved or issues that needed to be resolved for the greater good of the country and its harried citizens. Each was ignored and let to gather dust. The dust itself is a witness to the affliction known as do-nothing tradition.

I am not sure there are any good intentions left any more in the frequent resort to setting up of committees and panels by governments whose reports are cynically ignored. The setting up of panels and committees has become the dishonest routine by government to assuage public feelings and make the people feel that government is not sleeping on duty. They are not meant to address problems that need to be solved or issues that need to be resolved. They are meant to make the governments feel good.

Buhari has not demonstrated any particular resolve to act differently on these matters. Let me cite only one recent case. In response to a petition alleging corruption against Ibrahim Magu by the attorney-general and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, Buhari suspended the chairman of EFCC and appointed a judicial panel chaired by Justice Ayo Salami, to investigate him. The report of the panel has never been made public. Magu was left to stew in uncertainty until he exercised the only option open to him – he resigned as commissioner of police.

Did the president lack the will to do the needful to either clear Magu if the allegations were not proved or punish him if, in accordance with his much-touted anti-graft stance, Magu was found to have soiled his uniform as a very senior police officer?

What is interesting from leakages from the report of the panel is that the panel went beyond seeking to prove or disprove the allegations against Magu. It dared to suggest the restructuring of the anti-graft agency to make it more effective and its anti-graft work more productive. One of its recommendations was that the commission should be headed by a retired justice of the court of appeal in order to give a sense of direction to the manner in which the agency tends to make a shoddy work of its investigations.

We expect things to be better and the system to work much better and satisfactorily. I am afraid it is a long shot unless and until governments at national and sub-national levels recognise and respect the four-letter word, will, as the fundamental pillar that demonstrates courage on the part of government to do well by the people. The endless shuffle may serve vested political interests, but they cripple the ambition of the Nigerian state to do well by the people.