Politics
By Anthony Isibor.
BOSS Mustapha, Secretary to the government of the federation, says that various administrations have been concerned with the increasing cost of running the public service of Nigeria without seeming concurrent productivity in the quality of service delivery.
He made this known during the inauguration of sub-committees on (a) implementation of government white paper on restructuring and rationalization of federal government parastatals, agencies and commissions and (b) review of new parastatals, agencies and commissions created after submission of the report on restructuring held at the Conference room of the secretary to the government of the federation on Thursday, November 4, 2021.
He said this continued suffering under a daily increasing weight of high cost of governance, underpinned by high personnel and overhead costs to the detriment of having adequate resources for development projects was what gave birth to the creation of the committees as a drive to evolve sustainable governance architecture for effective service delivery by the public service leading to the enactment of several reforms.
“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.
“The need for cutting down the cost of governance cannot be more compelling than now, especially in the face of our declining revenue and the need to make the federal government less of a cost centre and more of a revenue generator on one hand and on the other hand less an employer of labour, but more as the creator of enabling environment for the private sector to galvanise the needed income streams and job opportunities for national development.
“This led to a number of reforms, some of which achieved their objectives; others did not while some were either truncated or not implemented at all.
“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 on 18th August, 2011 and submitted its report on 16th April, 2012.
“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,” he said.
According to him, 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.
He, however, expressed satisfaction that some of these reforms and strategies being put in place was beginning to show the potential of yielding desired results.
NOV. 04, 2021 @ 14:30 GMT |
A.I
Tags: Boss Mustapha
