HIGH cost of governments has remained an issue with the blames
located mainly in the billions spent in maintaining the 468-member
National Assembly. The debates should be more extensively to include
other areas of government wastes, at all levels.
The two-year-old advice of the Presidential Advisory Council, PAC,
for reduction in the number of Ministries, Departments and Agencies,
MDAs to address the issue has been ignored. It probably cost the PAC its
life.
Ministries and agencies remain fertile soil for political patronage.
As opportunities diminish in States and Local Governments, the federal
pool is the only one with resources to accommodate an increasing number
of unemployed politicians. More ministries and government agencies exit
to meet demands for political appointments.
Political expediency overrules economics. Ministers fight over their
status and size of their ministries. The argument, leaning on
constitutional provisions on equality of States, hammers on the absence
of equity in subjugating one State to another by appointing junior
ministers. The political solution lies in 36 federal ministries, each
with sufficient resource base to appease politicians.
More costs arise from the ease with which the National Assembly
creates agencies. Little thought is given to financial implications of
laws that expand bureaucracy. Each new commission or department of
government adds to the cost of governance. However, these agencies
hardly improve government services. They result in additional tension as
government battles with appointments and political correctness in that
direction.
If we take the anti-corruption agencies as example, government’s
reluctance in curbing waste will be more glaring. There was the Code of
Conduct Bureau, then Independent Corrupt and other Offences Practices
Commission and finally the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
Their roles clash. Most petitioners patronise all three on the same
issue. Governments have neglected calls for their merger though with
strong assertions for more efficiency in costs and operations.
Similarly, some commissions should be departments within ministries.
Other wastes are in the unlimited number of aides for the president,
governors, and spurious appointments like Chief of Staff and Chief
Security Officers for local government chairmen. There are more such
appointments like aides for special duties.
The N15.6 trillion governments spent between May 1999 and December
31, 2010 to maintain public servants tells only a part of the story of
wastes. It does not capture savings that would have been made on capital
expenditures if some ministries and agencies did not exist.
Governments need to act fast in order to rescue shrinking resources
for investments in critical development needs like infrastructure. It is
also important for our governments to start planning their expenditures
in anticipation of a time when oil income that funds these wastes would
have gone.
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