Osinbajo: We Can’t Cut Cost Of Governance On Our Own, We Need National Debate

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has responded to calls on the presidency to reduce the cost of governance, saying it is a decision that has to be made by all stakeholders in the country.

Osinbajo stated this while responding to questions by a former governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and immediate past Emir of Kano, Muhammad Sanusi, during a webinar organised by the Emmanuel Chapel, themed, ‘Economic stability beyond COVID-19’, on Friday.

According to Osinbajo, cutting the cost of governance was something that must be done, adding however, that it could be difficult for the government to do it by itself.

Recall that last Friday, Sanusi had asked Osinbajo what Nigeria could do in a different way to solve the challenge of bankruptcy, as he noted that that the governance structure in the country had set it up for such to happen.

He had said: “The greater Atlanta (in the United States) has a Gross Domestic Product that is higher than that of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and Atlanta is not the richest city in the United States.

“I don’t want to be disrespectful, but the annual sales of Tesla exceed the budget size of our country, so should we not begin to cut our coat according to our cloth; should we not begin to look at all these costs and the constitution itself; maybe turn the legislators to part-time lawmakers, have a unicameral legislature instead of bicameral, have the local governments run by employees of the Ministry of Local Government Affairs? We just need to think out of the box to reduce structural cost and make government sustainable over the long term.”

Osinbajo, while responding, said, “There is no question that we are dealing with large and expensive government, but as you know, given the current constitutional structure, those who would have to vote to reduce (the size of) government, especially to become part-time legislators, are the very legislators themselves. So, you can imagine that we may not get very much traction if they are asked to vote themselves, as it were, out of their current relatively decent circumstances.

“So, I think there is a need for a national debate on this question and there is a need for us to ensure that we are not wasting the kind of resources that we ought to use for development on overheads. At the moment, our overheads are almost 70 per cent of revenues, so there is no question at all that we must reduce the size of government.

“Part of what you would see in the Economic Sustainability Plan also and several of the other initiatives is trying to go, to some extent, to what was recommended in the (Steve) Oransaye Report, to collapse a few of the agencies to become a bit more efficient and make government much more efficient with whatever it has.”

The vice president also stated that the government had cut down some waste following the detection of some ghost workers.