The House of Representatives Adhoc Committee sitting to review the duplication of Government Agencies has proposed the merger of the Administrative State College of Nigeria (ASCON) and the Public Service Institute of Nigeria (PSIN).
The Committee, headed by Hon. Victor Danzaria, said this was due to the overlapping function of both agencies.
Danzaria said it was costing the government a lot of money to maintain agencies with similar responsibilities.
He said this when the Director General of ASCON, Mrs. Cecilia Gayya, appeared before the committee, in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.
The DG of the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization, (CBAAC) Hon. Oluwabunmi Amao, appeared before the Committee.
She said “Counter productivity of established agencies is a fact that a lot of agencies led to a lot of loans we always approve as a National Assembly to maintain the organizations. The Adhoc Committee is looking at the productivity and service delivery of these agencies.
“Another mandate of this committee is to ascertain root cause analysis of the regular bickering making established agencies the government keeps spending money on. There are agencies of government that don’t have enabling acts and yet the government still spends money on them. It is tough for this county to keep these agencies while we keep borrowing money to maintain them.
“Another mandate is to establish areas of mergers, synergies and justification of existence. The truth is even though you may have your enabling act, this Adhoc Committee would determine whether it should be repealed, amended or taken away. The justification of the existence of your agencies we have to hear from you. If the Service delivery is not there, if Nigeria is not gaining from the agency, why are they exist?. We cannot continue to keep borrowing money to maintain most of these agencies that we feel need to be merged or taken away.”
The Director General of ASCON, Mrs. Cecilia Gayya, had earlier said the agency overlaps with PSIN in areas including training, consultancy and research.
She said while ASCON has an Act backing it, the PSIN did not.
She, however, said the two institutions could exist side by side. She said they overlap in practice but not in law. She called for a review of the ASCON Act to broaden its mandate.
Olusola Akintonde
