An Ad-hoc committee of the House of Representatives working on the review of duplication of functions of federal government agencies, has mulled the merger of the Administrative Staff College of Nigeria (ASCON), and the Public Service Institute of Nigeria (PSIN).
The Hon Victor Danzaria-led panel said the move was due to the overlapping duties of both agencies, which he said was costing the government a lot of money to maintain, even when the responsibilities they deliver were similar.
The lawmaker dropped the hint when Director General of ASCON, Mrs Cecilia Gayya, and Director General of the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization, Olueabunmi Amao, appeared before the Committee.
“Counter productivity of established agencies is a fact that a lot of agencies led to a lot of loan we always approve as a National Assembly to maintain the organizations. These Adhoc Committee is look at the productivity and the service delivery of these agencies.
“Another mandate of this committee is to ascertain root cause analysis of the regular bickering making established agencies government keeps spending money on. There agencies of government that don’t have enabling act and yet 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 The truth is even though you may have your enabling act, this Adhoc Committee would determine whether it should repealed, amended or taken away.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 existing. We cannot continue to keep borrowing money to maintain most of these agencies that we feel need to be merged or taken away”, he told the gusts during the resumed engagement of the committee with select agencies.
The Director General of ASCON, Mrs Cecilia Gayya, had earlier confirmed that the agency overlaps with PSIN in areas including training, consultancy and research, adding that while ASCON has an Act backing it, the PSIN did not but also pointed out that the two institutions could exist side by side.
