There are uncertainties in the air as the federal government finally opts to holistically take a second look at the Steve Orosanye Report on MDAs which was ready since 2012. ELEOJO IDACHABA in this report looks at the mood of public servants who may be affected if the report is finally implemented.
If the plan by the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari to take a second look at the technical report on Restructuring and Rationalisation of the Federal Government Parastatal, Agencies and Commission popularly known as Steve Orosanye Report is anything to go by, the fate of many civil servants on its pay roll hangs in the balance.
This is because even though the government has not come out categorically to state that some of its employees would lose their jobs in the new arrangement/planned merger and downsizing of MDAs, investigations by this reporter have revealed that a good number of civil servants, especially at management and lowest cadres, would be affected except the middle-level staff. For this reason, there is apprehension among many civil servants as to what becomes of their fate should the government implement the report.
The report, several reviews
The popular Orosanye report was set up on August 18, 2011, by the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan to take another look at existing agencies of the government whose functions appear similar. And in less than a year later, precisely on April 16 2012, the report was ready and submitted to the government. However, for inexplicable reasons, that administration failed to implement the recommendations as it rather subjected it to another scrutiny under a former Minister of Justice, Mohammed Adoke. Nigerians waited in vain till the life of that administration ended in 2015.
President Buhari on assumption of office in 2015 had also subjected the report to series of sub-committees on several occasions. At different points, it was chaired by former heads of service comprising Bukar Ajih and Amal People. The outcome of these were later subjected to another sub-committee under Ebele Okeke, another head of service of the federation whose report contained in what is now known as the White Paper was recently submitted to Boss Mustapha, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation.
Mustapha, according to findings, is to present the recommendations to the Federal Executive Council any moment from now. These are beside other recommendations governing the existing research institutes. In all, out of the existing 541 MDAs, 400 were recommended for total restructuring in the form of merger, scrapping, etc. This whole arrangement is because of the heavy financial burden on governance.
Part of the details
The report noted in part, for instance, that an agency like the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) set up by the administration of Ibrahim Babangida in 1986 to midwife job-creation for jobless Nigerians would have to be merged with the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria to form the National Agency for Job Creation and Empowerment. By this arrangement, very top management staff of the two organisations would give way and to that extent, the government would have saved the sum of N15.4 billion on the average.
Also, the Federal Roads Safety Corps (FRSC) also established by IBB in 1988 would cease to exist as an autonomous agency because its core mandates are almost in line with what the Vehicle Inspection Office (VIO) and Highway Department of the Ministry of Works, Motor Traffic Division (MTD) unit in the Nigeria Police Force do. To that extent, the sum of N50.8 billion would be saved as against the erstwhile running costs. Although, many of its personnel would be absorbed by the police, further investigations revealed that not many would be absorbed.
The same goes for the National Agency for the Control of Aids (NACA) and Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC); National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON) and Nigeria Christian Pilgrim Board (NCPC) in which the committee outrightly recommended that they should be scrapped while the government washes its hands off sponsoring citizens on pilgrimages. Others are the Administrative Staff College of Nigeria (ASCON) and Public Service Institute of Nigeria (PSIN) with overlapping functions; Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC), National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), Nigeria Postal Service (NPS) were recommended for merger and come under one body; the National Universities Commission (NUC), National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), Nomadic Education Commission, National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) were also captured in the report and recommended for merger; the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA), Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN), Voice of Nigeria (VON) are to lose their substantive autonomous heads and come under one body; the National Orientation Agency (NOA) is to lose its autonomy and be merged with a unit known as Public Communication Department in the Ministry of Information.
The Nigeria Export Promotion Council (NEPC) and Nigeria Investment Promotion Council (NIPC) are also to be merged in the new arrangement. The report noted outrightly that agencies like the National Productivity Centre (NPC) and Fiscal Allocation Commission whose existence are merely on paper should be scrapped. The list is endless. In all of these restructurings, varying degrees of money are to be saved into the coffers of the government, because with the loss of managerial autonomy, a good number of top senior and managerial staff would be affected as against what government spends on recurrent expenditures for employees in those categories.
Before now, while it appeared as if the government had soft-pedalled on its decision to implement the Orosanye report, in July 2022, the matter resurfaced. This was during an interface President Buhari had with senior civil servants. At the meeting, the president stated clearly that civil service would no longer be a dumping ground for job-seekers.
NASS’ inputs
As a first step towards the implementation of the report, the White Paper requested that the executive liaises with the National Assembly with a view to correcting grey areas and give it a legislative backing. To that extent, during a recent interface with the upper chamber, Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola, the chairman, Senate Committee on Finance, acknowledged the report while meeting with some heads of MDAs.
Reactions
Speaking with Blueprint Weekend on the matter, some staff of FRSC who preferred to be anonymous noted with dismay why in every public service reform the name of FRSC always tops the list.
According to a Unit Commander in one of satellite towns of Abuja who does not want his name in print, “This would make the second time the corps would be balkanised. I recall in the year 2000 when I newly joined the service; the autonomy of the Corps was transferred to the police for almost a year. This was during the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo.
“The Corps Marshall then was a retired General Hananiah under whose leadership the Corps thrived, but within one year of becoming a unit under the police, rot set it, marshals began to collect bribes on the road. In fact, the spirit of excellence hitherto in the corps dwindled because for months, no salary because the police saw the merger as a way of punishing Marshals whom they accused of taking the shine off the police. If that happens as planned, many would not go along. I personally would not want to be absorbed into the police or VIO.”
Israel Manga, a civil servant who has less than five years left in service to complete the mandatory 45 years, said, “I pray it doesn’t work before I retire in 2026. For some of us that are not educated, when they want to do it, they will simply say our files are missing and that is how some people would die out of the frustration.”
No respite for workers
According to a report by the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre (PLAC), it still remains to be ascertained what the government intends to do clearly with its employees who for years have not seen the relief of a government that truly cares especially after the ravaging Covid-19 experiences.
“In light of the high cost of governance in Nigeria, piling debts, depleting government revenue, and the multiplicity of organs and functions within the civil service, this strategy may prove beneficial to managing resources at the government’s disposal and making the civil service system more effective. It is not yet clear how the government seeks to achieve this. However, observers wonder if this would translate to many more citizens becoming unemployed, in an uncertain and difficult times, when organisations within other sectors of the economy are laying off workers.
“The President may have provided some pointers on this issue in his message commemorating the 2020 Workers’ Day, as he stated that the government would ensure that no employer would retrench workers without recourse to due process, he however stressed that the Presidential Economic Sustainability Committee is working to reposition the economy by exploring means to grow Nigeria’s non-oil sector.”
All eyes are now on the SGF office, NASS and the Federal Executive Council as Nigerians wait for what they intend to do with the report.
