Oronsaye: Opening a can of worms

Under normal circumstances, the decision to finally implement the Oronsaye Report should be before announcing the removal of fuel subsidy and the appointment of 48 ministers. However, circumstances are not normal.

Implementation of the report is belated as it should have been one of the first things done upon assuming office. Oronsaye Report, initiated by former President Goodluck Jonathan in 2012, recommends the scrapping or merging of various government agencies. Twelve years later, the Report is to all intents and purposes outdated.

The 800-page document stated that there were 541 parastatals, commissions, and agencies and recommended that 263 of them should be reduced to 161 while 32 should be scrapped and 52 merged. However, since 2012 approximately 1, 000 additional ministries departments and agencies (MDAs) have been created whose duplication of functions and irrelevancy could not possibly have been addressed by Oronsaye.

Being a former Head of Civil Service of the Federation Oronsaye was concerned with eradicating duplication of functions and increasing efficiency and his report did not envisage mass retrenchment of staff. There is widespread justifiable belief that there is no real intention of cutting the outrageous cost of government.

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The truth is that while the government is heaping misery upon the citizenry, political office holders are living in luxury at public expense and show little inclination to stop.

There is both national and international condemnation of the way the cost of governance is increasing when the nation’s landmass is itself decreasing and poverty is rampant. If the Tinubu administration had intended to reduce the cost of governance, then they were supposed to have limited themselves to the number of ministers specified by the constitution. Cynics believe that their references to implementing the Oronsaye Report are simply a ruse to distract attention from the planned Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) protests and the threat of massive disorder as a result of utmost dissatisfaction with the way and manner in which government officials conduct themselves.

In truth, Nigerian political leaders do not see the need for humility in public service. They enjoy strutting around like royalty and enamoured by people prostrating before them in public. Instructing them to behave sensibly with requisite decorum isn’t part of any agenda.

There are allegations that there is no economic team guiding the actions of this administration because they appear to be operating in a “trial by error” mode. In the midst of economic malaise, President Tinubu has turned to “successful” Nigerian billionaires including a man who is not known to have succeeded in any business ventures in which he was not granted either monopoly, import duty waivers, income tax waivers, or other types of concessions by government, and another who borrowed billions from his own bank at a ridiculously low-interest rate and even then, defaulted in repaying the money. These are supposed to be Nigeria’s modern-day “economic gurus”!

In truth, President Tinubu did promise to follow the path of his predecessor and he is doing so. Former President Buhari’s path was one of low intellect, bigotry, nepotism, printing money and strutting around as if he knew what he was doing. Without any detailed record of what the money was used for, he illegally and unconstitutionally collected N23.7 trillion in loans from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

Although implementation of the Oronsaye Report is expected to save some amount of money, the savings will pale in comparison to the treasury looting during Buhari’s tenure under which some of his aides are alleged to have stolen billions! As a result, what is playing out is the darkest economic chapter of the nation’s history. There is unparalleled and unprecedented human suffering in the land and the palliatives being dished out are inconsequential.

The federal government is planning yet another silly cash transfer to unidentifiable Nigerians.  Even as Nigerians are being inconvenienced and harassed over Bank Verification Numbers (BVN) and National Identity Numbers (NIN), neither of them is used to identify recipients of the opaque cash handouts which are nothing more than a drop in the bucket of what is needed to cushion the effects of disastrous economic policies.

Concerned Nigerians such as legal luminary and human rights activist Olisa Agbakoba, have criticised government for its slow response in tackling the problems of exorbitant governance. He believes that even as lobbying for many MDAs listed by Oronsaye for merger or scrapping to be retained, the number of ministers can be reduced from 48 to just 12!

It cannot be repeated enough that Oronsaye did not set out to solve the problem of expensive government.  The really wasteful expenditure in government is not related to civil service costs it is undeniably the exorbitant cost of executive governance.  Despite this, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has never expressed any commitment to reducing the cost of governance in terms of dispensing with unnecessary presidential jets, curtailing international gallivanting, reducing the size of inordinately large VIP convoys, purchasing locally assembled vehicles, reducing the budget for luxury items for personal use, or reducing billion naira banqueting and entertainment budgets.

Stopping at Oronsaye’s 12-year-old recommendations is simply not good enough. If the purpose is to drastically reduce the unjustifiable costs of governance, then Oronsaye has opened a can of worms which must be examined thoroughly to include executive profligacy and not be limited to civil service.