By Adedapo Adesanya
President Bola Tinubu has resolved to implement the Stephen Oronsaye report that called for a leaner government by merging some ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) and scrapping some others 12 years after it was suggested.
The President’s decision was announced by a presidential spokesperson, Mr Bayo Onanuga, in a post on X.
“Twelve years after the Steve Oronsaye panel submitted its report on restructuring and rationalizing federal government parastatals and agencies and a white paper issued two years after, President Tinubu and the Federal Executive Council today decided to implement the report,” Mr Onanuga wrote.
“Many agencies will be scrapped and many others will be merged to pave the way to a leaner government,” he added.
First introduced in 2012, successive governments have been called on to implement the Oronsaye report as a way of cutting the cost of running the government.
The Stephen Oronsaye report observed that, “There are 541 government parastatals, commissions and agencies in the country,” in the 800-page document, with many of them having overlapping or duplicated functions. As a result, it recommended that 263 of the statutory agencies should be reduced to 161; 38 agencies should be abolished; 52 be merged, and 14 others should revert to being departments in their relevant ministries.”
Unfortunately, the farthest both the Jonathan and Buhari administrations went on the report was the issuance of White Papers.
For former President Buhari, in November 2021, he inaugurated two sub-committees headed by former heads of service of the federation – Mr Bukar Aji, Mrs Ama Pepple and Me Oladapo Afolabi – on the implementation of the Oronsaye-led presidential committee.
