Buhari never saw Oronsaye’s report, says ex-minister

Adebayo Shittu, the former minister of communication, claims that during President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, Steven Oronsaye’s report was not given to him.

According to Saturday PUNCH, Shittu served as a minister from 2015 until 2019 during Buhari’s first term in office.

He said that since the Buhari administration was not made aware of the report, its implementation was not necessary.

“The report was with the previous government (Jonathan’s), but they took no action,” he declared. At least not while I was there, no one brought it to the attention of our government, the Buhari government. Thus, the matter was never discussed at all during the Federal Executive Council meeting. If no one brought it and there were no grievances, we would not have been justified in examining it at all.”

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Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana, described the report as outdated, advising the federal government to ensure that “the crisis of insecurity is not compounded through the retrenchment of hundreds of thousands of workers.”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