The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved the full implementation of the Stephen Oronsaye Panel report to merge some parastatals, agencies, and some commissions, while others will be subsumed, scrapped or relocated.
The decision was made at the FEC meeting chaired by President Bola Tinubu on Monday.
This, according to the Special Adviser to the President on Policy Coordination, Hadiza Bala Usman, is in line with the need to reduce cost of governance and streamline efficiency across the governance value chain.
To ensure the implementation of the proposed changes, FEC set up a committee with the mandate to implement the mergers, scrapings, and relocations within 12 weeks.
FEC also received a report from the inter-ministerial panel set up to review the affairs of the National Social Investment Programme.
The Council further approved the immediate restart of the direct payments to 12 million households comprising 60 million Nigerians with key provisos.
In 2011, then President Goodluck Jonathan set up the Presidential Committee on Restructuring and Rationalisation of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies with Oronsaye as chairman.
In April 16, 2012, the committee submitted an 800-page report identifying, amongst several other things, overlapping agencies, causing wastage in expenditure.
The report said there were 541 parastatals, commissions and agencies and recommended that 263 of the agencies should be reduced to 161, 38 agencies abolished and 52 merged.
There were some motion without movement on the report during ex-President Muhammadu Buhari eight years in office but the new government said implementing the report aligned with its cost-cutting measures.
