So what is the Oronsaye Report and why is it a big deal? To cut a long and circuitous story short, what is commonly known as the ‘Oronsaye Report’ is a 103-page whitepaper on the report of the presidential committee inaugurated by Goodluck Jonathan to provide a framework for the restructuring and rationalisation of the multitude of parastatals, ministries, commissions and agencies under the remit of Nigeria’s federal government.
It is basically a document that tells the government what bodies do not need to exist, what bodies should be merged for maximum efficiency, and what functions are being duplicated or contested in such a way as to make governance inefficient, slow, or unjustifiably expensive.
Q: The government’s responses seem to indicate that the only priority is to ensure that it remains insulated from as much major change as possible
In general terms, it is helpful to think of it as the report submitted by an external systems auditor hired to observe the inner workings of an organisation and find out how to make it work in a leaner and more efficient manner.
Or at least that is what it should be on paper. In reality, the situation -as with that of any document that aims to reduce the size of government in Nigeria – is not that straightforward.
I mentioned earlier that Stephen Oronsaye faced severe opposition while trying to implement age-based tenure limits for parastatal heads under Umaru Musa Yar’adua. This is the tip of the iceberg of pushback that his report received and continues to receive.
The Oronsaye Report is a big deal for many reasons. Some see it as a key part of any Nigerian strategy to address the situation where roughly 70 percent of the federal budget is spent on wage payments and debt repayments annually, leaving roughly 30 percent for capital investment in a country that has an estimated $100 billion annual infrastructure financing gap. Making the leviathan-sized federal government smaller is seen as an inescapable part of addressing this imbalance.
On the other hand, some also see it as the document written by an arrogant free-market fundamentalist that threatens to destroy their only tried and tested source of wealth creation over the past five decades in Nigeria – government expansion.
The suggestion that the government should not be empowered to play an ever-expanding role in the Nigerian economy, or worse still that its share of the economy should be reduced makes this group of people bristle with outrage. The ethnic origins of its author and the president who commissioned him also add another political dimension to this statist view.
A third group of people see the report as an unworkable solution, but nevertheless a useful part of the conversation about repositioning the Nigerian civil service in line with repairing Nigeria’s economy to deliver the type of growth it needs to support nearly 200 million people without falling into chaos. So what promise exactly does this report hold and is it likely to do what it says on the tin?
Will the Oronsaye Report make the FG more efficient?
This is by no means a straightforward question to answer, mostly because the report itself is not by any means a cut and dried document ready to plug into the system and play. Indeed, as you go through the document line by line, it quickly becomes apparent that any proposed implementation will be a protracted affair that drags on for years instead of the weeks or months that some hope for. For one thing, approximately 90 percent of the recommendations in the original 800-page report were rejected out of hand by the government.
The phrase “Government rejects this recommendation” appears 266 times in the document. The phrase “Government notes this recommendation,” which is to say, “Government also rejects this, but more politely,” appears 252 times. In contrast, the phrase “Government accepts this recommendation” appears only 125 times.
Reading through the whitepaper, there is no sense that any priority is actually given to the professional findings of Oronsaye’s committee. The government’s responses seem to indicate that the only priority is to ensure that it remains insulated from as much major change as possible, which of course is contrary to the spirit of fundamental change or repositioning.
This goes to the heart of what is wrong with the report or any intended implementation thereof. While those who are familiar with the structure of Nigeria’s annual federal budget are very used to the idea that a number of functions and associated expenditures are duplicated in several places, the political will to attack this duplication is another matter entirely.
The issues and ideas examined in the report are not by any means rare or niche knowledge – I once even wrote a television script alongside my late friend late Binta Bhadmus on this very issue when we both worked on The Other News on Channels Television.
None of this indicates that a government establishment that historically has no interest in making itself smaller and less powerful will suddenly see any benefit in doing so now, just because President Buhari said so.
Read also: Will Nigeria ever implement the Oronsaye report? (1)
And then there is the issue of the panel that will inevitably need to be set up to action it – if it ever makes it that far. Nigeria’s civil service has never at any point in its history successfully carried out a cross-agency collaboration this wide-ranging, especially on a topic this politically charged and contentious. This is not to mention the possible issues surrounding permission from the National Assembly and even potential legal repeals that any implementation of this report might require.
So what exactly does President Buhari’s approval of the Oronsaye Report mean realistically, given these circumstances? Does the president’s approval mean the Oronsaye Report will be implemented even in part? Short answer: no.
We have established that the report is by no means even a completed, cut-and-dried document, nor is the political will to implement it going to extend beyond the pages of newspapers once the actual operational realities of trying to trim 50 years of pork-barrel come into stark relief.
Ultimately, given the realities of Nigeria’s decades-old situation and the antecedents of the current administration, chances are that this latest “approval” will more likely than not end up being little more than another short-lived window-dressing attempt.
You can read the full Oronsaye Report whitepaper here.
