Former Heads of Civil Service of the Federation Bukar Aji, Amal Pepple and Oladapo Afolabi are to chair the sub-committees on implementation of restructuring of federal ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs).
Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha disclosed this on Thursday at the inauguration of two sub-committees on the implementation of the whitepaper on the restructuring of MDAs to reduce the cost of governance.
Other members of the committees are permanent secretaries of ministries and representatives from the Bureau of Public Service Reforms
Mustapha said the other committee will review new parastatals, agencies, and commissions created after the submission of the report on restructuring.
He said the process will evolve a sustainable governance architecture for effective public service delivery.
“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,” the SGF said.
“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.
“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.
“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.”
Mustapha said the committees will proffer time-based recommendations – not exceeding one year – on restructuring and rationalisation, if deemed appropriate of the new agencies.
