Senate threatens to remove unproductive MDAs

Nigeria's Senate Finance Committee threatened on Wednesday that any government agency that fails to meet its statutory responsibility will face the Stephen Orosonye report.

Committee Chair, Senator Solomon Adeola Olamilekan said so during a five-day interactive session on the Medium Term Expenditure Framework 2023-2025,” in Abuja.

The “Stephen Orosonye Report,” DAILY POST recalls, recommended the abolition of many government agencies and parastatals due to lack of productivity and duplication of statutory mandates.

During Wednesday's committee hearing, the second of the five-day event, Senator Adeola frowned at the lying attitude of some chiefs and chief executives of agencies belonging to to the government who were unable to appear before his committee, but sent representatives who are clueless saying that parliament would no longer tolerate this.

The lawmaker insisted that the upper and lower legislative chambers would give effect to the "Orosonye Report" to junk agencies that have outlived their usefulness.

He said, "We are behind the Orosanye report and will give effect to it to weed out some parastatals that are not productive.

"These parastatals will be reduced to departments under their relevant ministries, which will help reduce costs."

The lawmaker further expressed his anger that some heads of government agencies wanted to drain the nation by enriching themselves, noting that the parliament will stop waste and leaks at all costs.

He noted, "Many government agencies are enriching the individual pockets of business leaders at all levels and this would be greatly reduced. I believe this will be the solution and we are seriously considering it.

"We are making sure that in this year's budget, we start something like this before the president presents his budget. If it works, it will be the best for us.

"Many of you should be prepared for our strongest recommendations that agencies should pay all collection costs. We do this at FIRS; we do this at Custom and nothing will stop us from doing it to other MDAs, NIMASA, NCC We have reconsidered FIRS 4% and they still raise their internal budget to N265 Billion NCC, although it does not give them the cost of collection, their budget total for the fiscal year is well over N600 billion.

"So all of this, we have to try as much as we can to bring the temperature down. It can't be business as usual anymore. We've tried; we've helped; we've called and called; we've done everything what we could to bring everyone to the table and make them understand the current state of affairs in the country.

"But to our surprise no one seems or wants to listen and it is on this note that we in the National Assembly are looking in this direction to take drastic measures to stem the tide of waste in the system.

"Furthermore, we inform the government that the issue of granting waivers to the tune of N1.6 billion and we are borrowing the sum of N11 trillion, we cannot meet this in any way. .

"What the waiver means is that some people will not pay duties or other charges and instead arrange for them not to pay the colossal sum of money at the expense of Nigeria , and most of those who obtained the waiver ended up being traders rather than encouraging manufacture and production and since the purpose of granting waiver cannot be achieved, it is just and proper to cancel any derogation.

"Again on the pioneer legislation, a company that exists in Nigeria and has enjoyed pioneer status for five years, after five years the company returns to seek pioneer status for another five years, it cannot not is no longer possible.

"If you can't reach your goal within five years, pack your bags and go. Enough waste, enough leaks because we can't grant pioneer status.

"I know many business leaders are too big to appear and they will look at us and say I have 5 billion naira to control and who is this senator asking us to appear.

"Some people were in my office asking that their CEOs not be there, that I should tamper with justice with mercy and allow them to represent their absent CEOs.

"This is a parliament. This is the highest legislative body in the land. Most of these chief executives are authorized by us. Why are they now bigger and have they backfired? we?

Meeting continues Thursday.