The Center for Fiscal Transparency has welcomed the directive by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, for the implementation of the Stehpen Oronsaye report after 12 years.
The Center strongly believes that implementation of the report is long overdue, as it will enhance efficiency, reduce government waste, and promote accountability. We therefore call on the administration to go beyond the rhetoric to make public a clear implementation timeline to empower the media and civil society organizations (CSOs) to independently monitor progress and ensure adherence to the report’s guidelines.
We urge the administration to update the report before implementation, given that there have been fundamental changes in the structure and operations of the public sector since the report was released over a decade ago. For instance, while there were 541 MDAs in 2012, there are now over 900 MDAs, hence, the need for a review of the report to address current reality.
Recall that the so called “Oronsaye Report” was compiled by the then Presidential Committee on Rationalization and Restructuring of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions, and Agencies; it provides a comprehensive roadmap for streamlining government operations, eliminating redundancy, and optimizing resource allocation.
The report was submitted to former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, on April 16, 2012, and it recommended, among others, the need to reduce the over-bloated size of government through merger and scrapping of some agencies of government. Significantly, the report proposed that 263 of the statutory agencies should be reduced to 161; it also called for the scrapping of 38 agencies and the merger of 52 others.
Since submission, past administrations have lacked the political will to implement the report, failure of which continues to put pressure and steadily increase the government’s recurrent expenditures. The full implementation of this report will be a step in the right direction for the administration, which has not shown commitment to fiscal responsibility, and it’s highly hoped that it will be backed by actions, given that similar pronouncements have been made by former leaders regarding the report.
As the country grapples with a challenging fiscal landscape, worsened by various economic pressures, including dwindling revenue streams and increasing debt obligations, we call on organized labor and other stakeholders to support this move in the interest of our shared future.
The Center reaffirms its commitment to supporting efforts aimed at promoting fiscal transparency, accountability, and public integrity within Nigeria’s public sector; we advise the government to pay closer attention to the activities of Government-Owned Enterprises (GOEs) where there have been reported leakages to improve revenue efficiency.
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