Oronsaye Report: Tinubu to Scrap, Merge Agencies
POLITICS DIGEST – President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in a move to restructure public service, has ordered the full implementation of the Oronsaye report.
The decision comes twelve years after the submission of the report by the Steve Oronsaye panel and the issuance of a white paper two years later.
Minister of Information and National Orientation Mohammed Idris, disclosed this while briefing State House correspondents at the end of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting in Abuja.
The minister said many agencies would be eliminated, combined or restructured in line with the recommendations of the committee.
“So in a very bold move today, this administration, under the leadership of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, consistent again with his courage to take very far-reaching decisions in the interest of Nigeria, has taken a decision to implement the so-called Oronsaye Report.
Read Also:
“Now, what that means is that a number of agencies, commissions, and some departments have actually been scrapped. Some have been modified, and marked while others have been subsumed. Others, of course, have also been moved from some ministries to others where the government feels they will operate better,” said Idris.
Consequently, the President constituted a committee to implement the mergers, scrapping and relocations within 12 weeks, said Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Policy Coordination, Hadiza Bala-Usman.
Submitted in 2012, the Oronsaye report on public sector reforms revealed that there are 541 — statutory and non-statutory —Federal Government parastatals, commissions, and agencies.
A year earlier, the then President Goodluck Jonathan had set up the Presidential Committee on Restructuring and Rationalisation of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies, under the leadership of former Head of Civil Service, Stephen Oronsaye.
The 800-page report recommended that 263 of the statutory agencies be slashed to 161; 38 agencies be scrapped; 52 be merged and 14 be reverted to departments in various ministries.
The report also recommends that the law establishing the National Salaries and Wages Commission be repealed and its functions taken over by the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Responsibility Commission.