Prominent Civil Rights Advocacy group, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has applauded the reported decision of President Ahmed Tinubu to trim down the number of Federal Government’s funded agencies in line with the renowned Steven Oronsaye report.

HURIWA however thinks that the disposition of the Nigerian government to merge some of the agencies of the federal government would not make any sense if the over bloated executive cabinet of the Federation constituted with about 48 ministers is not also reduced to just 36 which is the recommendation of the Nigerian Constitution.

In a media statement in which HURIWA also commended the intention of President Tinubu’s government to pay unemployment benefits to youths, the Rights group cautioned that the payments of unemployment benefits would be abused and probably hijacked by politicians belonging to the ruling party to push forward their political thugs as the beneficiaries rather than the intended target.

HURIWA therefore wants the government to put transparent, fool-proof, and accountable mechanisms impossible to interfere before kick-starting the payment of unemployment benefits to youths who truly deserve it but more importantly, HURIWA is asking the Tinubu’s government to emphasize more on building up the human capacity and skills of the unemployed youths rather than concentrate on just handing them handouts which are capable of crippling their capacity for self-development, self actualization and self-employment.

HURIWA expressed excitement that the implementation of the Steven Oronsaye report signifies that several agencies of the government would be merged, subsumed, scrapped, and relocated, however warned that viable agencies such as Federal Road Safety Commission recommended for merger should be left as they are so as not to create bureaucratic bottle necks. The Rights group said it is economical wise to carry out thorough financial audits of the agencies to be merged or scrapped so as not to throw away the baby with the bathwater. HURIWA said that from benefits of hindsight, many of the apparently money-guzzling federal agencies deserve to be scrapped to save Nigeria of the heavy financial burden that such unproductive entities constituted.

HURIWA recalled that Mr.Mohammed Idris, the Minister of Information and National Orientation, revealed the decision on the Oronsaye’s report to State House correspondents after Monday’s Federal Executive Council meeting at the Aso Rock Villa, Abuja. ⁣

HURIWA pointed that under the Steven Oronsaye report, the following are possible: Former President Goodluck Jonathan inaugurated the Presidential Committee on the Rationalisation and Restructuring of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies. He appointed Stephen Oronsaye to head the committee in 2012;The report came out as an 800-page document that recommended the scrapping and merging of 220 out of the then-existing 541 government agencies; The report, If implemented, will cause more than 100 heads of agencies and parastatals to lose their jobs; It recommended the reduction of statutory agencies from 263 to 161 as well as the abolition of 38 agencies, the merger of 52, and the reversion of 14 to departments in ministries.

The document proposed the management audit of 89 agencies capturing biometric features of staff as well as the discontinuation of government funding of professional bodies/councils; Also, the Oronsaye report disclosed that the government would be saving over N862 billion between 2012 and 2015 and the breakdown showed that about N124.8 billion would be reduced from agencies proposed for abolition; about N100.6 billion from agencies proposed for mergers; about N6.6 billion from professional bodies; N489.9 billion from universities; N50.9 billion from polytechnics; N32.3 billion from colleges of education and N616 million from boards of federal medical centres.

On what could undermine the noble goal of implementing the Oronsaye’s report, HURIWA pointed out that amidst economic turbulence and mass poverty, the constitution of 48 ministers and 20 special advisers by President Bola Tinubu as his federal executive cabinet of the Federation is insensitive and costly. The Rights group said it is irrational to know that whereas the populace and the suffering masses including workers on low wages are called upon to endure record inflation and general hardship, the President’s failure to rein in the cost of governance from the top is disappointing.

HURIWA insisted that for an administration facing headline inflation that continues to rise, having triggered naira devaluation, and faces dwindling foreign reserves and a rising public debt estimated by the Debt Management Office to be 37 per cent of GDP, a bloated cabinet is anomalous, irresponsible, unacceptable and despicable.

HURIWA maintained that it is true, that the Nigerian constitution ties the President’s hands to a minimum of 36 with the provision that each state of the federation must have at least one minister, but Tinubu’s cabinet surpasses each of his four predecessors of the Fourth Republic, which the Rights group says has shown that his decision to trim down the number of agencies, hasn’t gone far-reaching enough and must be fundamentally addressed and redressed with the immediate reduction of the size of his ministers to only 36.

The rights group said that from abundance of empirical evidence it is obvious, that political considerations overrode Tinubu’s campaign promise to appoint a cabinet with technocrats in the majority. Even more dismaying, several of the ex-governors are under criminal probes for allegedly embezzling public funds in their states ended up as ministers.

HURIWA cited examples of one of the ministers who was an alleged money launderer for the late Sani Abacha, the brutal military dictator whose stashes of stolen billions Nigeria is still recovering in tranches. All these negative indices dampens hope of cost-cutting, effective, responsive governance, or of revving up the anti-corruption drive as the government wants Nigerians to believe that the new resolve to implement the Oronsaye report can achieve.

HURIWA is convinced beyond the shadows of doubts, that beyond rhetoric, Tinubu has so far not demonstrated strong will to initiate drastic cost-cutting and he has since achieve the infamous record as Nigeria’s largest federal cabinet ever. The appointment of acolytes and political associates signals prebendalism that is inappropriate at these times, just as HURIWA said the government can’t possible convince rational Nigerians that the government wants to cut the costs of governance when his federal cabinet is the largest not only in Africa but globally.

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