The federal government has inaugurated two sub-committees on the implementation of the whitepaper on the restructuring of ministries, departments and agencies to reduce the cost of governance.
Speaking at the ceremony in Abuja on Thursday, Boss Mustapha, secretary to the government of the federation (SGF), said the other committee will review new parastatals, agencies and commissions created after the submission of the report on restructuring.
Mustapha noted that the process will evolve a sustainable governance architecture for effective public service delivery.
The sub-committees are chaired by former heads of service of the federation — Bukar Aji, Amal Pepple and Oladapo Afolabi. Other members of the committees are permanent secretaries of ministries and representatives from the Bureau of Public Service Reforms
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“It is heart-warming that some of the recent reforms and strategies being put in place are beginning to show the potential of yielding desired results. Worthy of immediate mention is the Federal Civil Service Strategy and Implementation Plan (FCSSIP) 2021 – 2025 and its associated Revised Public Service Rules (PSR) as well as the introduction of Performance Management System (PMS),” Mustapha said.
“It was in a bid to address this, amongst others, that the Committee on the Restructuring and Rationalization of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies was constituted 18th August, 2011 and submitted its report on 16th April, 2012. The report recommended that of the 541 Statutory and Non-Statutory Federal Government Parastatals, Agencies and Commissions, 263 statutory agencies should be reduced to 161, 38 agencies should be abolished, 52 agencies should be merged, and 14 should revert back to Departments in Ministries.
“Subsequently, the White Paper on the Report was issued and published in March, 2014 and was followed by the White Paper implementation Committee inaugurated in May, 2014. However, for a number of reasons, most of which were anchored on political expediency, the White paper not only rejected a large number of the recommendations, it also merely noted an equally greater number of others. But again even those accepted were not implemented.
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“Thus, Nigeria has continued to suffer under a daily increasing weight of a high cost of governance under-pinned by high personnel and overhead costs to the detriment of having adequate resources for development projects. For a long time now, the country has been struggling to make sure that at least 30% of its annual budget goes into capital projects.
“These two Committees viz: Review the Main Report and White paper on Restructuring and rationalization of Federal Government Parastatals, Agencies and Commissions; and review New Agencies created after the Submission of the above
report from 2014 to date; were therefore constituted to provide Government with action plan and roadmap of implementing the recommendations contained therein.”
The SGF added that the committees will proffer time-based recommendations, not exceeding one year, on restructuring and rationalisation, if deemed appropriate of the new agencies.
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