Reps committee mulls merger of ASCON, Public Service Institute of Nigeria

The House of Representatives Adhoc Committee on review of the duplication of government agencies has mulled the merger of the Administrative State College of Nigeria and the Public Service Institute of Nigeria.

The Ad-hoc Committee being chaired by Hon Victor Danzaria who said this became necessary as both agencies have overlapping functions and was costing the government a lot of money to maintain agencies with similar responsibilities.

The Chairman of the Ad-hoc Committee made the observations when the Director General of ASCON, Mrs Cecilia Gayya, appeared before it in Abuja.

According to him, ” 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. This Adhoc Committee is to 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 The truth is even though you may have your enabling act, this Adhoc Committee will determine whether it should be repealed, amended or taken away.

“The justification of the existence of your agencies, we will have to hear from you. If the Service delivery is not there, if Nigeria is not gaining from the agencies, why are they existing. We cannot continue to keep borrowing money to maintain most of these agencies that is why we feel there is the need to merge or take away some.

The Director General of ASCON, Mrs Cecilia Gayya, had earlier said that the agency overlaps with PSIN in areas including training, consultancy and research.

The DG who explained that while ASCON had an Act backing it, the PSIN had none . however advised thatthe two institutions coild exist side by side.

She called for a review of the ASCON Act to broaden its mandate.

The DG of the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization, Olueabunmi Amao, appeared before the Committee.

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