 Welcome back. We're taking our first hot topic now and it's the fact that a lot of people have applauded the federal government led by Bola Akhmet Tinobu because it has approved implementation of the Oroh Saini report to major agencies. So agencies now will be managed. For instance, EFCC and ICPC will be managed and every other thing that has to do with agriculture will come under the Ministry of Agriculture and the rest of those things. So this is supposed to cut down the cost. We have Dr. Omoshala Deji, a political scientist with us this morning. Good morning and welcome to the program. Good morning, sir. Good morning. So political will, that's what we're seeing here, subsidy gone. Now agencies merge and all that. The cost that I asked when we were doing the newspaper review was that how will this actually serve to cut down the cost? Knowing that in the civil service, people don't just lose their jobs and they have already promised us that everybody who is working in these ministries in these agencies will not lose their jobs. So how is it really going to cut the cost so that when we applaud we know what we are clapping for? Well, first, I disagree with the government that people won't lose their jobs. There's no way, like if you imagine two TV stations, for example, there's no way some people will not lose their jobs. There's no way. But the thing is, those that will lose their jobs can just be effectively managed in such a way that you look at the old in the system, the old people in the system, and you look forward to their retirement or you summarily compensate them and retire them if they have just about two or three years to retire. Even at that, it will affect recruitment because if people are so much in the system, due to the hygiene, you can't recruit. But the implementation of it is a step in the right direction. What I can say is it is better late than never because in Nigeria, we have multiplication and duplication of agencies. You tend to ask yourself, what is the main difference between EFCC and ICPC? And what is EFCC doing that ICPC cannot do in vice versa? So the also report is necessary, especially now that Nigeria is broke. So if you trim down all these agencies that politicians and the military has created out of lack of ideas, mainly because it created agencies and ministries to put the cost on the government, it's not a way of creating employment. Appointing several, eight, another, it's not a way of creating employment. We're going to last with the private sector. So the president of them working on to do civil. Now I want to implement the EFCC, but it's a step in the right direction. But one thing I said is the politics behind the action of the president. Now the also year report was done during the Jonathan administration, I think in 2014. Now where what he came in? Everything that is about Jonathan was deemed as, you know, a bad or ineffectual. So the devouring presidency to drag and failed to implement the EFCC, but do is set up a committee at that time, but he didn't implement the report. Now that President Nungu is there, when he came in, he tried to take some steps towards restructuring. Now this implementation of the EFCC also falls on that restructuring as well. Now when he took that step, it was politicized, like the relocation of some departments in the CBA to Lagos. And some of the department to Lagos, the Northern region of the country were clamoring that no, it shouldn't have been like that. Now the Nungu administration might have, during the relocation of the department and agencies under CBA might have chosen to implement the EFCC report silently so that it doesn't kind of like give credit or something to the Jonathan administration, which is from the opposing, which from the opposition party and the government that they are so demonized in court, you know. So, but when the clamor comes in, the president, madam, looked at it, okay, if I come under the EFCC report, nobody can blame me because the EFCC report is widely accepted across political stakeholders as a tribal report. Now that he has come under the EFCC report, if you notice yesterday, there's been no much criticism. So the president might actually be implementing the EFCC report because he suits his own thinking, he suits his own desire and past agenda itself. But be that as it may, he also report implementation at this point in that is what Nigeria need, we need to cut down the cost of government. You know, you find people in various agencies, department that are virtually doing nothing, that are just sitting down, you find agencies of government that have no direct impact on the society and on the citizens of the country. These agencies that have been there, that have been implicated should be matched for effectiveness. But it concerns me, it concerns me that on the one hand, we want to cut costs. On the other hand, we want to sack people and put them back in the job market, which means unemployment will be rife in this country now. So how do we even say it is a good thing that is happening to Nigeria? What will the people who will lose their job in the course of doing this say? Are they not Nigerians? The thing is, we need to look at the opportunity cost on the short time and on the long time. If you look at it, the billions of Naira that it's going to be saved when those agencies are matched, if you estimate it, it can be used to provide better amenities for the people. And government just have to be on their toes in such a way that I think it will be right for government to just implement everything at its stretch. It's going to lead to crisis because lots of jobs in the different agencies and paracetals, if you sum it up, if you do a sum of evoke, it's going to be a significant amount of people that are unemployed. So the government can do a face-by-face matching of the duplicated agencies. And like I said, the people that have spent so many years in service, government can look at it, okay, if you have less than five years in service, government can summarily compensate you, can summarily compensate you maybe financially or any other means the government didn't pay. So if you ease those ones out of the system, then you have space there. Another thing is that you can begin to screen. If you look at these agencies, you know the way recruitment into government agencies are in Nigeria, what we can call the party-party system. If government scrutinize the employees in these agencies, they are those that have failed results, most certainly. They are those that are not qualified at the time of recruitment, most certainly. They are those that have been at a particular failure because they are not able to meet the requisite requirement for promotion. Those kind of people should naturally be installed in the system. So if you factor in all these, you will see that the people that will be just released from the system, for example, if they have a quick result, and government is out of the system, you can't protest, you can't do anything, you know. Then another thing is government should also look at the aspect of post-workers. We know the way these things are done in our client who went by some people who just tried to block the system to be receiving the salaries of fake names, to be receiving the salaries of those who are dead. So if a proper scrutiny is done, there are some percentage that will be rightly dismissed. And when those people are dismissed, the people that are left in the system can't, can't be well managed. Just that the thing that will support is the recruitment. Another thing is that if there is a shortfall of manpower in a particular section, you can retrain those that are within the system to fit into other status other than recruiting, especially for the low-skilled worker. So if this is done, the unemployment aspect will be well managed, but can government afford to keep the parameters and agencies the way it is now? The answer is no. So if government can be bold enough to remove post-sufficiency that affects the majority of Nigeria, both the young, the rich, the poor, I think government should be courageous enough. I still don't understand. I just don't understand. For me, I'm a big bullet, right? I understand you've cited some examples. People with fake results, people who are ghost workers, that's fine. But how about the other huge percentage of people who were, you know, employed rightly, who were employed with the right documents? And right now you're sending them out into the streets. Do you mean that right now there's also an economic hardship in the country? So how are people supposed to, like, fend for themselves? These are people who already had a job. And you know, there's something that various said about civil service job, it's for life, it's pensionable. And taking that away from them, what are you sending them to? That's my question. Let me make a practical example. Let's say an agency of government are 100 employees, another one has 100 employees. Now you now want to match both. Because the responsibility of that agency or the agency that you are managing together at home, the responsibility has increased because if you match EFCC with ICPC now, there have to be an environment that would deal with corrupt practices. You also, let's say the two agencies have 200 employees. Now if you are matching, let's say you are not targeting 150, 140 employees. Now out of those 200, there are people that have sweat most of the time in the system. There are people that use it as a pre-crisis. So at the end of the day, if those ones are out of the 200, first, like maybe 30, you have 170. So what you are trying to manage as you guys unemployment is the remaining 30, whether you are targeting 140, so and you are 170. But then there are still 30 as well. Now how is it even possible that you couldn't even catch a thief when he was just alone? You are now pursuing him into the market to now go and look for him. Is it not more difficult? Because the ministries or the agencies are small. If you want to check ghost workers, for instance, it's easier when the population is small. Now you're merging the whole thing and I don't know how that is going to be easy. But the suspicious thing is that people complained about the fact that this government has bloated its cabinet into 40-something or more than every other cabinet that has come. And the president said this cabinet is bloated, let me use the word, because if you merge them together, they cannot be effective enough. But it's the same government that is trying to merge other agencies to make them effective. So I can't relate. I think first the issue of unemployment, what comes to mind is that government relationship with the private sector is also important. If government has a good relationship with the private sector in Nigeria, the private sector definitely groups more than the government. So there may be a kind of memorandum of understanding between global and the private sector. For example, okay, we are going to list some people off, but the private sector, let us collaborate. Maybe you can absorb some of these people. These are people that have years of experience as well. These are people that know the workings of the system. I think that would implement a good relationship with the private sector. As regards the cabinet issue you mentioned, you see, this reduction in cost of governance, if you want it to work, it has to be holistic. And the holisticness of it, we send signals to people that may want to start to touch this implementation because if you imagine AFCC with ICPC, you don't expect that the head of ICPC, knowing that he's about to lose his job, will just sit back and watch. No, he's going to not be losing government as his presidency to either delay the implementation or for government to get this in it completely. So that brings me to the point that the government has to lead by example. Mr. President, you have the highest number of ministers in this country. Then you need to lead by example to cut down the amount of ministers that you have. Then it is a time that we move to the legislature as well for us to advocate for unicameralism instead of bicameralism. Now unicameralism is one legislative house. Bicameralism is two. Now we are descending at the house of them. I believe we can function well. We can function effectively with unicameralism because we are trying times and we need to take every necessary step to cut costs. So imagine that we have one legislative house. The amount of money that that will cost in terms of salary, to be sure of offices, aids and all that, you know, it will be the amount of cost that we're saving. The running cost, you know, buying jeeps for these non-only users, senators every four years and all that. So these are the steps that government needs to take. So it is a holistic approach that is needed, not just making people that don't have much influence and power to so far because at the end of the day, it is the low-level and maybe medium-level workers in these past years and they get things that will suffer it. My take is no, extending to the presidency, extending to the legislature as well. So this or all these holistic approach will not bring about a constant governance. For example, then every four years there is a leadership recruitment process in the country. If you pass a letter by 2027, we want to have just one legislative house. Nobody will protest over it because often not really your tenure end in that 2027. But I think that will be more effective because it will save cost more. Because if we look at the money we are using to manage those that are holding political offices, ministers, senators, House of Representatives, if we look at the amount compared to the salaries of these medium and low-level workers, you will see that it is unbalanced. It is actually incomparable. So if we look at it, we want the trimming down of the paracelser that agencies is quite needed for effectiveness. So on the part of effectiveness, we want to really save cost. We need to look at the political and the presidency and the legislature. So wrapping up now, how effective do you think this is going to be? And do you think even the workers will be efficient? And what is the transition going to be like? Is it going to be a smooth transition? Because you've already decided some people might try to lobby, some people might just try other alternative means. So are we going to have a smooth transition? Is it going to be effective? And are the workers going to be efficient as well? Are they going to put their hands in the plow and just do their jobs the right way? Or is it going to demotivate them? Remember, they have just 12 weeks to deliver. For the effectiveness, I think it is going to be effective. What government needs to do now is not the setting of committees and other. It's implementation, because the report is there. The governing government set up committees and later promised to adopt the dictates of the report. So effectiveness, what if those agencies are mad? I think it's going to be very, very effective. But in terms of resistance, you won't expect that the implementation is sensitive, because people that will stand disadvantaged by the implementation will naturally fight against it. The people that are the boss in these agencies will naturally want to dismay it. And in Nigeria, you know, Nigeria is a power tubing society. Everybody likes to be the boss. For example, it's like this issue of state police. We don't believe that the current IG will just say, okay, let's go and implement state police. On the ground, it's naturally going to lobby number one for him to still hold on to the power that he has right now. And so that, you know, when he doesn't have any kind of competition or not. So the heads of these agencies will naturally want to lobby to delay the implementation. But what government has to do is to be serious about it and to go on out, to be committed about the implementation. So if government can go ahead and remove subsidy that affect the life of every Nigerian, then I think government can go ahead to implement the Arosso Yerri report. But if you just do it in a way that the fallout will be well managed. We don't want to see a situation of the removal of persons in the way back, you know, it was not well thought out and now people are suffering. No, we want to see a situation whereby it will be well managed and it will need to protest and it will need to another kind of place between labor and the federal government. Okay. Thank you so much. I was just going to say this. I remember when I think that said the EFCC was going to have offices in Lagos. And some other agencies and there was this whole opera like why are we, because people really love to hold on to power and say yes. But at the end of the day nothing happened. Nothing will happen as well. Only that I just want the government to remember the slogan they gave us, change begins with you. It didn't begin with them in this case. We don't hope that they're going to do something to show us that they like cutting costs from them. If I have 30 seconds, I don't mean if I have 30 seconds. Can I just... Okay, just quickly to wrap up. Okay. Yes, please. I've been looking for you to talk about that change begins with me that was propagated at the former minister of information, Dain Mohammed. I think it is an unjust look at to push to Nigeria because you went, the body government was to be put into power. The mantra of the progressive government at that time was change. So Nigeria has already changed by putting out the PDP. So the government should not have put his responsibility to change by saying change begins with me. I disagree with that. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. We've been talking with the political scientist Dr. Moshalad Deji and we were talking about the fact that there are going to be measures in some agencies of government according to what factors are approved. The Eurasian report finally is going to be implemented, even if it is not whole, but at least very major aspects of it will be implemented. And so we commend the federal government and hope they will do more and be transparent about everything they do. Let's take a break now and return with our second heart topic. Stay with us.