Two major opposition parties, the Peoples Democratic Party and Labour Party, have faulted President Bola Tinubu’s order on the full implementation of the 2012 Steve Oronsaye recommendation.
The two parties said the move was ill-timed.
Tinubu had on Monday announced plans to implement the Oronsaye report, which proposes the merger of ministries, departments and agencies, as a measure to cut the cost of governance.
The directive comes 12 years after former President Goodluck Jonathan had set up the Presidential Committee on Rationalisation and Restructuring of the Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies.
The committee headed by former Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Steve Oronsaye, had recommended the scrapping and merging of 220 out of the then-existing 541 government agencies.
But in the wake of Monday’s order for implementation, the House of Representatives has called on the President to halt the process and thoroughly review it before going ahead with its execution.
The lawmakers further described the Oronsaye committee recommendations as outdated.
Reacting in two separate interviews, the leadership of the opposition PDP and LP told our correspondent on Friday that the directive of the president that the report be implemented though laudable is wrong-timed as it is coming at a period when the masses are still grappling with biting economic hardship in the country.
The National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Debo Ologunagba, told our reporter in a phone chat that the call for implementation was ill-timed.
He said, “Like every other thing, timing is important. You can’t just wake up one day and say you want to implement such recommendations when the people have not recovered from the hardship brought about by this administration’s removal of fuel subsidy and devaluation of the naira. But as I said, timing is very important.”
His sentiment was also shared by the Chief Spokesman of the Labour Party Campaign Organisation, Yunusa Tanko.
Tanko disclosed that though the implementation was one of the action plans in the manifesto of LP Presidential Candidate, Peter Obi, it is not an initiative that should be executed in a hurry.
He said, “Execution of such recommendations must have its own process. It is not something that one can just rush like that. The goal was not to cut down employment but to improve the efficiency.
“However this particular government has made some fundamental errors that could give the Oronsaye report in bad light. For instance, they have put the people into abject poverty but failed to provide a solution to it. They removed subsidy on oil without making preparations to that effect. They promised palliatives which never came to pass.
“Perhaps it can be said that the Bola Tinubu’s administration is ill-prepared and this particular programme will assume to have a negative effect on the people without proper planning. Therefore, the president is making the pronouncement at the wrong time and it will increase the pain of the masses.
“You can even see that all their appointments and preparations since assumption of office are ill-timed. They need to first make the people comfortable to properly understand what they intend to do. But this copy-and-paste solution they are proffering is coming at the wrong time. It is ill-timed.”
Efforts to get the reaction of the National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Felix Morka, were however unsuccessful.
