Recently, this administration took some tentative steps towards cutting the cost of governance when President Bola Tinubu announced a directive that affected top government officials, including ministers, ministers of state, and heads of agencies.

According to the presidential directive, henceforth these categories of officials will be restricted to a maximum of three vehicles in their official convoys.

The cost-cutting measure, which was announced penultimate Thursday in a statement signed by the President, also indicated that no additional vehicles will be assigned to the public officials for movement.

In the directive, President Tinubu also ordered all ministers, ministers of state, and heads of agencies to have at most five security personnel attached to them.

The security team will comprise four police officers and one Department of State Services (DSS) officer.

No additional security personnel will be assigned, he ordered.

The President instructed the National Security Adviser (NSA), Nuhu Ribadu, to engage with the military, paramilitary and security agencies to determine a suitable reduction in their vehicle and security personnel deployment.

According to the statement, all affected officials are expected to comply with these new measures immediately, underscoring the urgency and seriousness of these changes.

Earlier in January, President Tinubu took significant steps to reduce government expenditure by reducing his entourage on foreign trips from 50 to 20 officials. For local trips, he reduced it to 25 officials.

He similarly reduced the Vice President’s entourage to five officials on foreign trips and 15 for local trips.

Incidentally, this latest effort is coming on the heels of the President’s decision to carry out a cabinet shakeup, which saw Tinubu jettisoning five ministers and appointing seven new ones – two more than the number dropped.

He also scrapped the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs, and from its ashes arose a humongous ministry in charge of regional development commissions – which I believe is being kobo wise naira foolish, as the impact of the defunct Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs is still debatable.

Set up on September 10, 2008 by President Umaru Yar’Adua as part of his bold plans to end restiveness in the oil-rich region, which has been the goose laying the nation’s golden egg in the form of petro-dollars.

At that time Yar’Adua said that the ministry would coordinate efforts to tackle the challenges of infrastructural development, environment protection and youth empowerment in the Niger Delta.

Sadly, despite the trillions of naira voted for the defunct ministry very little has been achieved while reports of sleaze and corruption have been rampant.

Many still recall the infamous “honourable minister “off your mic” saga of July 2020, when the then Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Mr Godswill Akpabio, who, incidentally, is now the Senate President, appeared before the House of Representatives Committee on Niger Delta to account for the N81.5 billion that was spent by the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) between January and July 2020.

According to reports between 2001 and 2019, the Federal Government approved a total of N3.38 trillion as budgetary allocation to the NDDC, which is a parastatal under the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs. During this period, the Commission received a total of N2.42 trillion in income from both statutory and non-statutory sources, according to the former Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr Abubakar Malami. Which meant that the total amount received by the Commission between 2001 and 2019 to N5.80 trillion (this undoubtedly would have drastically increased in the five years since the report was issued).

However, many still believe what the President has done is merely cosmetic attempts at reining in government overhead and a more impactful attempt would be merging ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) with overlapping functions.

This would eliminate duplication of efforts and wastage of resources. For instance, the National Salaries, Incomes, and Wages Commission (NSIWC) estimated that Nigeria could save approximately N1 trillion by merging or abolishing redundant agencies.

According to a report by The Cable, reducing political appointees is also crucial. Limiting the number of special advisers, assistants, and other appointees can help reduce the financial burden of maintaining a large workforce. A study by the Nigerian Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies revealed that Nigeria’s political appointees consume over 70 per cent of the country’s recurrent expenditure.

This brings to the fore once again why successive governments have been reluctant to implement the Stephen Oronsaye report, which was set up 12 years ago by the administration of Goodluck Jonathan with the sole aim of reducing the cost of governance.

But, for some unexplained reasons, Jonathan despite still having three years left before his presidency expired in 2015, failed to implement the report.

Then after securing a second term at a Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting in September of 2019 President Muhammadu Buhari, who replaced Jonathan in 2015, asked the Council to deliberate on the report, ostensibly for his administration to carry out its implementation. Unfortunately, till he handed over last May, nothing was done by his government.

On February 26, 2024, the matter again came up when President Tinubu presided over a meeting of the Federal Executive Council. We were informed after the meeting that Tinubu had ordered a full implementation of the Stephen Oronsaye Report. In furtherance of that directive, we were told that the President had constituted a committee to effect certain agencies’ mergers, scrapping, and relocations within 12 weeks.

Today is November 2, nine months after that directive, and so far there is no indication that the directive has even been considered talk much less about being implemented, especially with the setting up of another ministry and the appointment of more presidential aides and committees.

This is taking place when citizens, who were promised so much in the run-up to the 2023 General Election, facing the harshest economic situation in decades.

Whereas Nigerians are still being extolled to make sacrifices, there is absolutely no sign that those that put them in their present predicament are ready to do so themselves.

But wait a minute, while the government at the centre is even making cost-cutting efforts, what about the sub nationals – what are the various state governors doing as their own way of cutting costs in order to free up funds to make the lives of their citizens better?

In order for the nation to pull out from these difficult times, it’s necessary for everyone to make sacrifices; it should not be limited to the overburdened lower levels of the nation’s social strata.

Please follow and like us: