‘Scrap redundant agencies to reduce cost of governance,’ Senate tells FG

The Senate on Wednesday urged the Federal Government to scrap redundant agencies in order to save the cost of governance in the country.

The Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, made the call during the presentation of the report of the joint committee on Finance and National Planning on the 2021-2023 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper by the Chairman, Solomon Adeola.

Lawan said he agreed with the submissions of senators that several agencies should be scrapped to save the nation’s economy.

According to him, several agencies were created to serve specific purposes but were still retained after they had outlived their usefulness.

The Senate president said: “Many of the agencies were created to address specific challenges as of the time they were created. They are now irrelevant and have become conduit pipes that we appropriate money to every year while adding no value to the nation again.

READ ALSO: Call us ‘rubber-stamped’ N’Assembly all you want, we’re happy working with the executive —Lawan

“We need to work with the executive arm of government on this. I know it will be a tough task because some will argue that the exercise would lead to massive job losses. But we have to find a way out of the current situation because the cost of governance is too high.

“It is not the reduction of the National Assembly budget that would reduce the cost of governance. There is no money in the National Assembly. Our budget is just about N128bn out of a national budget of N13trn.

“We cannot reduce the cost of governance just by reducing the cost of running the activities of the National Assembly. We need to have a holistic, practical, and realistic way of reducing agencies and the cost of running those agencies that would survive.”

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