By Gabriel Ewepu

ABUJA – AS Nigerians react to the adoption of the Orosanya Report by the Federal Government, Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission,
Prof Tunji Olaopa, has called on President Bola Tinubu, to launch ‘National Reduction Strategy’ to sanitize the public sector for efficiency, effectiveness and productivity towards achieving policies and programmes initiated for national development.

Olaopa made the assertion during a meeting with the Director General, National Productivity Centre, NPC, Dr Nasir Mustapha at the Commission’s headquarters in Abuja.

According to him, engaging with NPC gives full recognition of how significant the agency is and will be in the shaping of Nigeria’s transformation journey, and in fixing the national economy simply through the spirited implementation of Mr President’s ‘Renewed Hope’ Agenda.

He further stated that in his days as Permanent Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Labour and Productivity in 2012, he advocated for the launch of a national productivity movement to install a new productivity paradigm.

He maintained that the national productivity movement will reverse the “national culture of prodigality and waste, especially to contain the unsustainable cost of governance.”

He pointed out that the national culture of prodigality and waste has practically made it impossible for the government to invest significantly in creating the infrastructural backbone to the country’s much desired industrialization.

However, he acknowledged that Tinubu has now taken a step to reduce the cost of governance by profoundly starting with the implementation of the Oronsaye report.

He said: “At the level of the state system and the public service, the point cannot be overemphasized if one says that the Nigerian state cannot be developmental if it is so very capable of being the generator of institutional wastes, redundancies and pointless costs being carried as public finance and budget overheads by MDAs.

“What productivity can ever exist in a public service with a workforce structure where too many people are doing nothing, too many doing too little, while too few are doing too much.

“Indeed, the political science literature is replete with evidence of the magnitude of costs and redundancies that Nigeria has generated by its peculiar brand of federalism, presidentialism, electoral system and diversity management praxis.

“There is of course the opportunity costs incidental on how the dynamics of the implementation of the federal character has undermined meritocracy and the institutional capacity deficits and obsolescence incidental.

“There are redundancies created by the unconscionable practice whereby every agency irrespective of cost implication, must have offices in all the states of the federation and even LGAs, without consideration for how technology can be leveraged for ‘joined up’ cost saving governance cum institutional networking and outsourcingAll considered, the job of the National Productivity Centre is cut out for it, especially in generating ideas and models that could help the government in getting a handle on resolving the unsustainable cost of governance, while at once creating the narratives and scripts for institutions like the National Orientation Agency (NOA) in their national values reorientation drives.

“Going forward, there is the imperative need to launch a national waste reduction strategy that should necessarily commence with:the unbundling of the expenditure structure of government to free resources for investment in real development; this will require productivity audit of MDAs and deletion of very many revenue generating agencies and those that ought to be self-financing from budget, in measures that reinforce a cautious implementation of the Oronsaye Panel report.

“We must get MDAs to articulate their productivity cum waste reduction plans based on an agreed national benchmark.

“And this should challenge the professionalism of the National Productivity Centre to refine and launch a new set of productivity metrics and tools for holding MDAs accountable to national productivity targets which must be admitted into the national development plan.

“And in this regard, the launch of a complimentary new national assets cum facility management and national maintenance system will be core critical.”

Earlier, the Director General, National Productivity Centre, NPC, Dr Nasir Mustapha, said, “Our mandate is to lead the productivity movement in Nigeria. We now have 20 State offices.

“One of our main strategic goals is to raise the national productivity consciousness level and we want to also build human capacity level of productivity improvement in both private and public sectors, so also to improve productivity in the industrial sector and manufacturing sector.”