MDAs, Commission on collision course over merger

The planned merger or outright scrapping of the Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC) has set Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) on a collision course, Ripples has learnt.

Worried over this development, the Chairman of the Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC) Barrister Victor Muruako has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to come out clearly to state if the Commission will be merged or scrapped as recommended by the Oronsanye report on civil service reform.

Muruako spoke in Abuja when the commission played host to members of Adamawa state Fiscal Responsibility Commission.

According to the FRC boss: “Most agencies since that Orasanye panel report has been made public, they have started taking delight in not taking serious what we do in the hope that we will be scrapped or merged and that the commission will not be any more.”

The Oronsaye panel report Muruako said, “has taken the wind out of the sail of our activities, the earlier the government makes it known that this commission is their own and that it’s a commission that has come to stay, and in the commissions efforts to attract funds to the CRF the better.”

While noting that the Commission has been doing its job, he was however quick to add that: “If any toe feels stepped on, it is left for the person but it is left for us to do our work, we don’t fight corruption, we prevent corruption and that is the cheapest way because we wont allow it to happen, we will try to stop you by stating that you will have to do the right thing, you have to do good budget so that there wont be left over for you to return and decide weather to keep it or to now return it.”

Justifying the need for fiscal responsibility, Muruako said: “The thing is that the easiest way to do it is that you do a good budget and then you also ensure that you don’t have excess money, like all this frivolous borrowing by other tiers of the government is something the commission could stop if the right thing could be done. When you have funds that you don’t need that is when corruption steps in, the fiscal responsibility act is a very good tool and the commission is a good tool for the prevention of corruption.”

Read also: FG calls for MDAs account balances

Since the creation of the commission, Muruako said the FRC has “developed the platform, have been able to set rules and standards upon which the MDAs under the corporations scheduled to the act have been able to account for the profit they made and we have been able to attract well over N366 billion as at June this year into the Consolidated Revenue Funds (CRF).”
So far, the FRC, Muruako said “has encouraged over 15 states to buy into this, it is because of this our insistence despite all the challenges and all the threats we have of being scrapped or being merged we have continued to do our work and we will still continue to do and we believe that in fact the easiest way to fight corruption is through fiscal efficiency and through fiscal responsibility and accountability.”

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