Former Governor of Anambra State, Mr Peter Obi, has urged President Bola Tinubu, to take full action as regards the recommendations of the Oronsaye Report which suggests a streamlining of Nigeria’s bloated governance structure and a reduction on fiscal wastage.
The Oronsaye Report, a comprehensive review of government agencies and parastatals commissioned by the Goodluck Jonathan administration, proposed merging or scrapping redundant entities to cut costs and improve efficiency.
In a statement shared via his official X handle, Mr Obi asserted that the current economic challenges besetting the nation, call for a concerted effort to curb government expenditure.
President Tinubu had on Monday ordered a full implementation of the Oronsanye-led committee’s report, consequently, announcing the merging, subsuming, scraping and relocation of several agencies of government.
While acknowledging that Tinubu’s decision was the right call, Mr Obi however, noted that beyond implementing the report, the government must go further and cut the cost of governance across board.
“Having found it imperative to implement the Report, the government should now do away with the bogus and needless wastages of our scarce resources on frivolous issues, and deploy such funds to the critical areas of Education, Health, and pulling people out of poverty,” Mr Obi buttressed.
Obi who was the Labour Party’s Presidential Candidate in the last election, however, advised that “we must not rush to implement the Oronsaye Report just because those that will be directly affected are mostly civil servants.
A very deep understanding of the workings of the Federal bureaucracy will be required to effectively implement the Report”.
In reinforcing his call, Mr Obi said that although the implementation of the report is long overdue, its remains a welcome development so long as the decision is informed by three basic principles which include: drastically cutting the cost of governance; ii) eliminating the overlapping of responsibilities to ensure that responsibilities are appropriately domiciled; and iii) increasing efficiency and effectiveness, which will increase productivity.
