Merger of FG’s agencies looms as Senate moves to curtail expenses

Some of the over 700 federal agencies and parastatals may be merged if need be to save Federal Government draining expenses on duplication of responsibilities and ineffectiveness.

The Senate gave the indication that it may give legislative backing to closure of some agencies found ineffective but draining pipes on government’s annual budget.

President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, gave this indication at plenary on Thursday during the adoption of the report of the Senate ad – hoc committee on Legislative Agenda.

Lawan threatened that unproductive federal agencies are at risk of being dissolved completely or at best merged with agencies rendering similar functions.

He said more than 50% of the over 700 agencies and parastatals are more or less, drain pipes on the nation’s resources by depending solely on budget allocations from Federal Government to survive.

He said: “Contributions on the floor of the Senate show the focus of members on how to make our country work and the issues on our agenda are issues that will create those positive changes that will make life better for Nigerians.

“This agenda will continue to be updated. Where we feel we have new things we will do that as society evolves. I also want to say that committees will be the one to flesh this agenda.

“The task before our committees is for them to sit down and look at the challenges in the sector they oversight and come out with the ideas on how the National Assembly can come by way of legislative intervention. We want to see that done and we will reintroduce sectional reports by Senate committees at the end of the year. That is different from oversight report.

“When we engage MDAs that we oversight we expect them to give us a road map of what they are doing. They should give our committees situation reports for legislative intervention.

“I believe that the current number of Agencies of government is simply too much and unnecessary.

“We have close to 700 Agencies of government and many of them only live on budgetary provisions. They have nothing to contribute to the coffers of government.

“This implies that either we merge or simply eliminate many of them and beside we don’t have money. We don’t have the resources.

“Instead of allowing agencies that have no value to contribute, remain in existence, we should simply eliminate them or merge them and then save the money for capital budget.

“So the committee on establishment and all of us should do something. We are going to engage with the Executive on this we have to have a review of the number of agencies that we have and not only the number but the functionality because we need to create some because we need them today because of the challenges we face”.

He added that the 9th Senate in line with the set agenda, will do something about the electoral reform, which according to him, supposed to be a continuous thing.

“We have to do something because of what we witnessed in the last election. We should start on time before the next election so that it will not be problematic”, he said.

The agenda, which is the working document of the 9th Senate, is encompassing and it covers areas of interest the upper chamber said will elevate the country to the next level.