• ‘Boards must raise audit committees to prevent fraud’
• Stakeholders charge Tinubu on implementing Oronsanye’s report
• ‘Public Corporations won’t deliver on mandates if appointments remain jobs for boys’
• President should set up committees to screen nominees, says Onyekpere
As lobbying, consultations, and discussions intensify within the rank of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the vacant governing boards/councils of Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs), the Federal Government has been urged to prioritise domain experience to both the board and the board audit committees, in appointing new members.
In line with the ongoing comprehensive restructuring and harmonisation of key government institutions with the Renewed Hope Agenda, President Bola Tinubu recently dissolved the Boards of MDAs.
Ahead of the President’s appointment of new members, however, stakeholders have urged him to see it as an opportunity to reset the composition of the non-executive boards as a veritable source of technical advisory to the executive management of MDAs, as well as, a circuit breaker in terms of compliance, audit, and governance.
They urged President Tinubu to depart from the tradition of using board appointments as compensation for party members, friends, and acquaintances if indeed he wants the new boards to breathe new life into government business.
Some of the stakeholders observed that the performances of the boards of MDAs since 1999 had been abysmal, lamenting that most of the members engaged in power struggles with chief executives, promoted fraud, and lack of accountability and probity over the years, even as they turned the agencies to conduit pipes for draining government scarce resources in conflict with their expected role of promoting growth across various sectors of the nation’s economy.
They stressed that: “Competence, merit, knowledge, and workings of the agencies must be the yardstick for appointing board members if the Tinubu presidency is determined to change board membership from patronage to harbingers of development.”
They also called for a quick implementation of the Steve Oronsanye report, noting that it would result in a more compact government with less wastage, as performance would be better monitored while goals and objectives would be effectively pursued.
Chief Executive Officer of Dairy Hills Limited, Kelvin Emmanuel, said that for MDAs to record higher performance in terms of revenue generation, and higher implementation, the constitution of board committees remains critical.
“Board audit committees are critical because they help in the financial reporting process, the selection of an independent auditor to take an outside look before records are sent to the Auditor General of the Federation, as well as receipt of audit results both for internal and external.
George Akume PHOTO: Blueprint Newspaper
“Historically, Nigeria has focused so much on the Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, Directors, and Director-Generals, that there has not been much focus on the non-executive team. On the other hand, the non-executive teams in the private sector play a critical role in the balance of power for executive performance. Governments at all levels should adopt this approach if we are desirous of engendering a system that is not only productive, accountable but sustainable,” Emmanuel said.
In his comments, a retired Director of, the Ministry of Information and Culture, Alphonsus Okorafor, said that governing boards/councils of most MDAs, by their composition, are not designed to achieve any measure of effectiveness, stressing that a member of a governing board should be one with the necessary knowledge and expertise to be able to add value to the operations of such organisation.
He added that this requirement is never considered when board members are appointed to government organisations, rather, the government sees it as an opportunity to compensate friends and loyalists.
“The recent case of the chairperson of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), who went there to struggle for power with the managing director, had a sense of entitlement because she felt that having served the then president, she deserved whatever she wanted. A governing board that has more politicians than professionals can never function effectively,” he stated.
According to him, such appointees would not be able to bring value because of their lack of expertise, sense of commitment, and poor knowledge of the mandate and operation of the organisation they are supposed to oversee.
He argued that making them effective could be achieved through a thorough selection process that will ensure only those with the requisite knowledge and expertise for each MDA are appointed.
It would be recalled that the Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), Prof Bolaji Owasanoye, recently took a swipe at board members whom he accused of exhibiting arrogance, poor skills, and fraud.
The anti-graft agency had earlier this year evaluated the MDAs on compliance with ethics, integrity, statutes, policy, and regulations.
On its part, the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), a Civil Society Organisation, said that for the boards to meet their strategic objectives, their composition needs to reflect merit, competence, innovation, character, and deep knowledge of the sector in which they operate.
CSJ Lead Director, Eze Onyekpere, explained that the composition of such boards cannot be a “job for the boys” if public corporations are to deliver on their mandates.
He argued that the corporations, led by their boards, have generally been drainpipes on the economy instead of contributing to wealth creation and solving sector-specific challenges.
According to him, many members have failed to return the due operating surplus demanded of them by the Fiscal Responsibility Act and in accordance with the operating surplus template and finance laws of respective years and have also held back money due to the Federal Government.
He argued that even though board membership is a political appointment, the president can expand the horizon of groups, organised private sector, labour, and other critical constituencies while the nominees could be made to undergo screening by respective anti-corruption agencies.
His words: “There should be a public notice of the intention to appoint persons to these boards. The names of prospective appointees should be published so that anyone that has information regarding the unsuitability of nominees for public office will be requested to submit the same to a committee of persons of impeccable character and integrity who will review the petitions and make recommendations to Mr. President.
“The Federal Government should set deliverables with milestones and targets, and a verifying monitoring and evaluation plan for the boards. Their performances should also be reviewed annually to ensure that their leadership is on target while dead woods are weeded out.”
The Presidential Committee on Rationalisation and Restructuring of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions, and Agencies, had in 2012 recommended the scrapping, abolition, mergers, and reversion of some existing institutions to departments of Ministries.
The General Secretary of the union, Peters Adeyemi, said the agencies, departments, and parastatals are the creation of laws, which will have to be repealed or amended while those that were created by the constitution must go through constitutional amendments.
He argued that what this means is that the implementation is not the sole responsibility of the executive arm of government. “It is therefore left to be seen how the National Assembly that had passed several bills that are awaiting the assent of the president for the establishment of some agencies and boards is going to handle its responsibility in the implementation of the Report,” Adeyemi stated.
However, he pointed out that the implementation of the report may portray an attempt to streamline bureaucracy and cut costs, cautioning that, “our past experiences with reforms aimed at cutting down bureaucratic cost are that they had always ended with job losses. Bureaucratic bloated cost in Nigeria is always on the side of recurrent expenditure. Unfortunately, in Nigeria, recurrent expenditure has become synonymous with civil servants’ salaries and wages. The lie dubious political officeholders sell to the uninformed public is that government is spending a huge sum of its revenue on civil servants’ salaries and wages, whereas salaries and wages of civil servants are not the sole components of the recurrent expenditure of the government.”
The pioneer Director General of the Bureau for Public Service Reform (BPSR), Dr. Goke Adegoroye, warned the government to be wary of antics that would be deployed by the political elite to scuttle the move.
He observed that given the large numbers of agencies whose Acts are to be reviewed, amended, and/or abolished and the weight of the expected lobby from politicians and career public servants, the process of legal realignment by the National Assembly could take upwards of 12 to 24 months.
According to Adegoroye, the way forward is for the Federal Government to go ahead and produce a White Paper of the updated report for the president to forward to the National Assembly for necessary action.
He added that the president would also have to issue an Executive Order directing the commencement of the administrative processes of mandate restructuring, organogram, manning level determinations, screening of officers, etc., to effect the merger.
He pointed out that the White paper produced by the Jonathan administration is what has constituted the real impediment to its implementation.
He urged the Tinubu administration to withdraw the White Paper and review the report in its entirety.
The Guardian
