Former Minister of Communication, Adebayo Shittu, says that Steven Oronsaye’s report was not presented to ex-President Muhammadu Buhari during his administration.

Shittu was a minister during Buhari’s first term in office between 2015 and 2019.

According to him, the report was not brought to the attention of the Buhari administration, and as such, there was no need for implementation.

He said, “The report had been with the previous government (Jonathan’s) but they didn’t do anything. Nobody brought it to our (Buhari government’s) attention, at least not when I was there. So, the issue never came up for discussion at the Federal Executive Council meeting at all. If nobody brought it and there were no complaints, we didn’t have cause to look at it at all.”

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There was controversy over the report since the Federal Government approved the implementation of some of its recommendations to reduce the cost of governance on February 26, about 12 years after it was submitted.

Twenty-nine government agencies are expected to be merged, even as eight parastatals will be subsumed into eight other agencies, even as some Nigerians fear that this may lead to job losses.

The National President, Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria, Tommy Etim, had warned that job losses amidst the current hardship in the country could lead to mass protests.

Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana, described the report as outdated, advising the Federal Government to ensure that “the crisis of insecurity is not compounded through the retrenchment of hundreds of thousands of workers.”

Meanwhile, the Federal Government, on Thursday, inaugurated the implementation committee.

Speaking on the matter, Shittu said that civil servants should not be afraid of job losses, adding that only politicians would be affected as the number of appointees would reduce.

“We must avoid or do away with duplication of services because that would increase the cost of governance. When we talk about some people losing jobs, I think that national interest is more important than personal interest, and I don’t see any civil servant losing his job on that,” he stressed.

Also speaking on the matter, Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Yusuf Ali, said implementing the Oronsaye’s report would reduce the excessively complicated administration of ministries, departments, and agencies of government.

Ali said, “One of the things you will find is that there is a lot of inter-agency rivalry. It happens almost everywhere, including in the US. If the report is implemented faithfully, at least we will be out of the problem of rivalry as well as overlapping functions and duties.

“It may not affect the personnel because it will become a larger body. And it will lead to having a leaner government that will be able to manage bureaucracy better. The fact that you are merging A and B does not mean you will dismiss people. It only means that you will have a larger number of people working in the same space.

“If you are talking about the loss of jobs, what will you say with the advent of artificial intelligence and robotics? Should we say people will lose their jobs and not invest in AI, robotics like drones, and others? Anything that will bring progress, we should try to adopt it.” (Saturday PUNCH)