When will the boards of federal agencies and parastatals be constituted? This is a question on the lips of many Nigerians, and it is a valid question, given that many of such bodies have been functioning without board members for several months. Even one or two that their boards have been constituted are yet to be inaugurated, months after.

This is not good enough.

Governing boards play a key role in an organisation?s success. They make decisions, set direction and ensure compliance with laws and regulations.

It is therefore surprising that in spite of these crucial roles, many of the federal agencies have been without board members.

The present administration came on board on May 29, last year. It has had cause to dissolve some of the boards, like the contraptions that the former Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, hurriedly inaugurated in the aviation sector at the tail end of his eight-year tenure, last year.

While we cannot query this, especially against the backdrop of how the governing boards came into being, it is bad that these agencies have not had governing boards since then.

Thus, we have very important agencies like the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau (NSIB) and the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET), without functional boards.

In the Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy, too, there are no functional boards. Yet, the ministry, like aviation and aerospace development, is home to what could pass for giants like the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Nigeria Shippers? Council (NSC) and National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA).

Other federal agencies without boards include: Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC), National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Nigerian Upstream Regulatory Commission, National Pension Commission (PENCOM), Oil and Gas Free Zones Authority (OGFZA), Nigeria Export Processing Zone Authority (NEPZA), National Orientation Agency (NOA) and Industrial Training Fund (ITF), among others.

There is even a peculiar case where both the chairman and managing director of an agency were named the same day. While the MD has since resumed, the other members of the board are yet to be named, not to talk of being inaugurated. That was months ago.

Many of these agencies are of national importance either due to the services they render to the country or their financial contributions to the national purse.

They therefore need the guidance and direction that board members are supposed to give. In the absence of governing boards, close supervision of the activities of their management is hindered even as their approvals are not properly scrutinised. This leaves room for arbitrariness and corruption.

To continue to let these agencies run without boards is like diminishing the crucial role that the boards are supposed to play.

Beyond that is the fact that running those bodies in the absence of governing boards is a gross violation of the Acts of parliament that established them, which provide for the appointment of boards that would work with the management teams in their operations.

Various industry groups like the Aviation Round Table Safety Initiative in the aviation sector, for instance, have been calling for constitution and inauguration of the boards in the sector. So are the stakeholders in other sectors too.

We align with their position.

This impunity of running government parastatals without boards has not been the usual pattern; it only gained currency in the Muhammadu Buhari years. We do not want to believe that it is this template that the present government wants to adopt.

We therefore urge President Bola Tinubu to give this matter the desired attention. These board appointments are tenured jobs. This has implications for board members that have been appointed but not inaugurated because, one; when does their term begin to count: the time of appointment or inauguration?

Moreover, whatever actions such board members take could become subjects of litigation on account of their not being inaugurated. (The Nation Editorial)

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