Nobody brought Oronsaye report to Buhari — Adebayo Shittu
By Jeffrey Agbo
Former Minister of Communication, Adebayo Shittu, has said that former President Muhammadu Buhari did not have to implement the Steven Oronsaye report on cutting down waste in government because it was not brought to his table.
Shittu, who was in Buhari’s cabinet from 2015 to 2019, told reporters on Friday that the Buhari administration did not have any reason to look at the report as there were no complaints about wastefulness in government.
He said, “The report had been with the previous government (Jonathan’s) but they didn’t do anything. Nobody brought it to our (Buhari government’s) attention, at least not when I was there. So, the issue never came up for discussion at the Federal Executive Council meeting at all. If nobody brought it and there were no complaints, we didn’t have cause to look at it at all.”
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Tinubu inaugurates committee on implementation of Oronsaye Report, issues 12-week deadline
Twelve years after Oronsaye submitted the report to the Goodluck Jonathan administration, President Bola Tinubu approved the implementation of some of its recommendations to reduce the cost of governance on February 26.
Twenty-nine government agencies are expected to be merged, eight parastatals will be subsumed into eight other agencies.
The Federal Government, on Thursday, inaugurated the implementation committee.
Speaking on the implications of implementing the Oronsaye report, Shittu said that civil servants should not be afraid of job losses, adding that only politicians would be affected as the number of appointees would reduce.
“We must avoid or do away with duplication of services because that would increase the cost of governance. When we talk about some people losing jobs, I think that national interest is more important than personal interest, and I don’t see any civil servant losing his job on that,” he stressed.