THRILLER FROM THE VILLA By Abdulrahman Abdulraheem
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While we admit that President Goodluck Jonathan may have set up the Presidential Committee on the Rationalisation and Restructuring of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies for altruistic reasons, we also as stakeholders consider it necessary to contribute one or two notes to the issues so that government, while intending to take us to the Promise Land, doesn’t end up worsening already existing challenges.
In fact, this column believes that government has some good recommendations in the report just as it has to discard some of the recommendations or implement them more carefully than the Oransaye- led committee suggested. The ones on how to fix the education sector is recommended by this column.
One very brilliant assertion the report also made was that government should not always rush to establish agencies just because an existing government department or another agency is failing in its responsibilities. Government should rather make the existing department or agency work rather than enact needless duplications. That is a lesson for the future anyway.
As for the scrapping and/or merging of some agencies and commissions especially the avalanche of redundant ones we have under the Ministry of Education, this column suggests a reform, training and retraining of existing staff and transfer of staff where necessary and not a kind of reform that will necessary lead to job losses. Even in cases where there are two or more people in a position where one person can cope, it is advocated here that government should not take decisions that could make anyone, from the biggest director to the smallest gateman, to lose his or her job. Reason, the economy, we don’t think, is sound enough for now to accommodate more jobless people. Of course, time may come in the future when people will lose government jobs and easily get gainfully engaged elsewhere.
As I write this, the President is in Germany, making contacts and meeting global business leaders as part of efforts to bring in more FDIs into the country, which will surely create more jobs and reduce poverty in the country. We don’t need to recount here other measures government has recently put in place to solve the perennial problem of unemployment in the country; therefore, we can’t be solving a problem on one hand and be creating more on the other.
If there are people who are really too old or too unproductive to make impact in any of these agencies, they should be eased out and given their entitlements immediately. Even if it’s a pure water business they start and employ one or two more people, the country can only become better for it. But we warn against massive job losses especially among people who are still very vibrant.
Aside job losses, this column doesn’t particularly think EFCC and FRSC should be scrapped or merged with any government department. Reason, the EFCC has justified the basis of its establishment and one cannot ignore the efforts of Nuhu Ribadu and Farida Waziri (some may disagree about the latter but it is an issue for another day) in making the commission a source of fear and restraint for especially political office holder. The billions of naira recovered for the government since inception as well as the near eradication of Advance Fee Fraud (we all know how rampant yahoo boys were prior to its formation) are enough reasons to leave the commission on its own for now.
Save for the sometimes unreasonable revenue generation drive of the FRSC management, the corps has –in recent times especially- justified its formation. It campaign for safe driving practices and punitive measures on traffic offenders have been effective and the impact has been felt. The Corps under a department in the Ministry of Works as recommended by the committee can’t possibly be as efficacious as this
As for the ICPC and other agencies recommended to be wiped out, any reform that will not necessarily bring massive job losses is welcome.
As we have consistently argued, government should not always think of the nearest anti-people measure anytime it claims it wants to cut cost. The government should cut its own cost rather. We have ministers of state everywhere but there is nothing working in the country, no stable power supply and billions upon billions have been sunk into the power sector. What do we need 40 ministers for?
The constitution is no Shariah; if it insists that we must have 469 lawmakers, we can amend it and say we only need 37 and we won’t pay them more than 30 percent of what the bunch of fat cats presently earn. These over-pampered people do not need all this money. They don’t.
We should not only amend the laws to suit selfish political agenda, we should instead do so to bring radical but positive changes. The TY Danjuma advisory council report that called for a reduction in the number of ministers, is still there, yet to be implemented.
Another problem we have in this country is policy inconsistency. Some of these agencies like EFCC and ICPC were created by the same party that may just scrap them now. What is the guarantee that any decision taken by the present government will not be reversed in few years time.
Of course we know that the PDP, the largest party in Africa lacks a clear cut focus and direction of where it is taking the country to. People just want to grab power for power sake and even brag that they will rule for 200 years without saying what they will do for the country within those years.
We have heard so much about transformation agenda but the real transformation is yet to start. Hope it will start soon.
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