The Budget Office of the Federation has said restructuring Nigeria into six regions is pivotal to reducing the high cost of governance.
It noted that the number of ministers also needs to be pruned and the number of political office holders and their aides reduced, lamenting that the huge recurrent expenditure had constrained the provision of good roads, steady power supply, health care services, quality education and quality shelter, etc.
This, it said, had contributed to observable underperformance of the economy, slow growth and current infrastructural challenges.
These recommendations were contained in a report by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, (ICRC), at its 3rd National Summit on ‘Diminishing corruption in the Public Sector’, which was held at the State House Conference Centre, Abuja on Tuesday.
The event, with the theme: Corruption and cost of governance: New imperatives for fiscal transparency, was attended by President Muhammadu Buhari; the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Tanko Mohammed; the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, (SGF), Boss Mustapha; the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed and the ICPC Chairman, Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye, (SAN), among others.
The ICPC report referenced the Budget Office as blaming the high cost of governance on bloated cabinet size, high cost of elections, corrupt budget practices, multiplicity of Ministries Departments and Agencies, (MDAs) and the high number of political office holders and their aides.
It said a direct result of the expensive governance structure was that less than 30% of Federal Governments resources were available to fund the much-needed capital projects.
However, the Budget Office, according to the document, recommended that government should prioritise completion of ongoing projects, restructure Nigeria into six regions and reduce the number of ministers, and build a more efficient civil service and conduct periodic staff audit.
While highlighting the drivers of the high cost of governance, the document quoted the Budget Office as saying that Nigeria has a large cabinet with 27 ministers, 16 ministers of State and 27 ministries, adding that the country has about 934 MDAs with duplicated functions and 541 public corporations and enterprises.
Further stating that
MDAs raise their personnel costs by engaging in indiscriminate recruitment without clearance from the Budget Office, it noted that the high cost of elections and resultant litigation contribute to the high cost of governance in Nigeria and that the current structure/size of the federal bureaucracy was clearly unsustainable for the size of the economy.
The Budget Office lamented that personnel cost for the past three years gulped N9.7trillion, adding that cost of governance had generally been on the rise and personnel costs represent a significant proportion of the spending.
According to the report, MDAs recurrent spending rose from N3.61trillion in 2015 to N5.26trillion in 2018 and N7.91trillion in 2020; this excludes the costs of government-owned enterprises and transfers to the National Assembly and the National Judicial Council.
The President, Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo and several other leaders had repeatedly stated the need to reduce the cost of governance, but not much has been done to actualise it.
Meanwhile, the Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation, Ben Akabueze, on Friday disagreed with the ICPC, saying only 185 projects were found to be duplicated in the 2021 budget, and not 257 as announced by the Commission.
Akabueze, who spoke on a television programme on Friday, stated that some of the projects identified by the ICPC were not duplicated but had description challenges.
Akabueze said there were about 20,000 projects in the budget and that if only about 200 projects were duplicated, it amounts to about 0.01%.
He explained that it was beyond the responsibility of the Budget Office to discipline those responsible for the duplication because the staff of the MDAs who prepare their budgets were not answerable to his office.
He further argued that errors were inevitable since the budget was prepared by human beings but that those culpable for the willful duplication of projects should be fished out by the ICPC and prosecuted.
Akabueze said the ICPC, with its investigative powers, should invite the people involved to find out if the duplications were willful actions intended to defraud the government or they were erroneous.
