The Presidential committee on the restructuring and rationalisation of? Parastatals, commissions and agencies have been urged to prevail on the federal government to shed the cost of governance in Nigeria as it is part of the problem bedeviling? the country.
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The International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law in a memo signed and sent to the presidential committee, by its Board of Trustees’ chairman, Comrade Emeka Umeagbalasi? and also made available to LEADERSHIP in Awka said that the high cost of governance in Nigeria especially at the federal level was the root cause of corruption.
The group which is clamouring for a reduction in the salaries of top government officials and the declassification of the emoluments of members of the National Assembly also advised that the positions of ministers of state be abolished to save the country valuable? funds.
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?“It is evidently clear that while statutory salaries for public servants in the country run into tens of billions of naira, questionable allowances for them run into hundreds of billions of naira. Out of the country’s 469 federal lawmakers, there are over 1000 personal aides recruited and attached to them, with tens of billions of naira of public funds expended on their needless upkeep annually, in the form of allowances,” he said.
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The memo further reads; “The needless provisions for “Ministers of State” should be recommended for abolition, their statutory functions, if any, taken over by substantive ministers and their permanent secretaries. Provisions for “Senior Special Assistants”, “Special Assistants”, “Executive Assistants”, etc, other than Special Advisers, Ministers and Commissioners are unknown to the Constitution of Nigeria 1999, as amended, and therefore, they should be discarded.
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