Jonathan reverses self on streamlining of ministries, parastatals

At last, President Goodluck Jonathan seems to have succumbed to pressure from organised labour that rather than scrapping some government agencies, he should think of how to create more jobs for the army of unemployed youths in the country.
President Jonathan last year set up a Presidential Committee on the Rationalisation of Ministries, Departments and Agencies.
The committee was headed by a former Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Steve Oronsaye.
The committee had since submitted its report, recommending the scrapping of some agencies and parastatals and merger of others that are considered to be performing overlapping functions.
The issue had been discussed extensively at the Federal Executive Committee, with some of the recommendations adopted and published by the media.
However, the organised labour kicked against the report, contending that implementing the recommendations therein would lead to loss of thousand of jobs and thus increase the unemployment rate in the country.
Following the submission of report by the committee, the Federal Executive Council set up a White Paper Drafting Committee and subsequently approved the White Paper.
However, the White Paper is yet to be released two months after.
Going by the 2014-2016 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy submitted to the Senate, President Jonathan seems not interested in releasing the White Paper.
Rather, he said his government would adopt new method to address the situation.
The President informed the Senate that should government go ahead to rationalise, the savings that would be made will be insignificant.
He said: “Government is taking steps to correct the situation as much as possible through the IPPIS and other efforts.
“The biometric verification of government employees is being accelerated and extended to all MDAs, with the inauguration of implementation committee on IPPIS.
“It had been hoped that significant savings would be made from the implementation of government’s White Paper on rationalising public agencies.
“Unfortunately, very little or no savings are likely to be made from the implementation of government’s White Paper on rationalising public agencies due to the fact that many agencies recommended for closure or merger were allowed to remain partly due to the fact that some of them are underpinned by law, which cannot be repealed in the short run.”
Going forward, President Jonathan said his administration will give priority to completion of all ongoing projects across the country.
He stated further: “The country, however, has faced serious challenges since the first quarter of 2013 as a result of significant disruptions to oil production that has led to an output drop of almost 400,000 barrels per day.
“Though the revenue loss has affected the implementation of the budget, we have so far been able to cope, thanks to our fiscal buffers and the Excess Crude Account.
“As mentioned earlier, our efforts in the area of revenue increase has been hampered by declining oil a s non-oil revenue.
“Government is, however, intensifying efforts aimed at stopping the illegalities in the oil sector; implementing a more ambitious non-oil revenue programme; and tightening fiscal policy as government prioritises spending and continues to focus on completion of on-going capital projects.”
President Jonathan said other measures to be explored “include leveraging on private sector funds through Public Private Partnership arrangements such as the second Niger Bridge, Lekki Port, etc to complement to efforts through the budget; rationalisation of recurrent sending through continued reduction or freezing of verge ads and through IPPIS project over the 2014-2016.”