EFCC, ICPC to be merged, 8 other agencies for scrap

The Federal Government has approved the merging of the Economic and Financial crime Commission EFCC with the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Commission into a single entity and the abolition of some other Federal agencies, commissions, and parastatals.

This follows the deliberations of the recommendation in the report of the Stephen Oronsaye-led Presidential Committee on the Rationalisation and Restructuring of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies. As part of the deliberations on the report, a review committee on the draft White Paper, chaired by President Goodluck Jonathan, approved that some agencies be either scrapped completely or merged with those performing similar functions.

Some agencies to be scrapped include the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE); Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC); Nigeria Export Promotion Council (NEPC); National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission (NSIWC); National Poverty Eradication programme (NAPEP); Utilities Charges Commission (UCC); the National Economic Intelligence Committee (NEIC) and the Public Complaints Commission (PCC).

The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) is to be retained, however with a new structure to reflect a framework to cover critical areas of national socio-economic development that corps members should be deployed for their primary assignments, while the Citizenship and Leadership Training Centre would focus on the promotion of moral values and ethical re-orientation among Nigerians.

The Council for Registered Engineers (COREN) and the Surveyors Registration Council (SRC) are to be retained, although they would henceforth not receive budgetary allocations from government from the 2015 fiscal year, while the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA) and the Federal Highway department of the Federal Ministry of Works are to be transformed into an inter-ministerial department after the amendment of their enabling laws and the Border Communities Development Agency (BCDA) is to be relocated to the Presidency. The government had also earlier announced that some unproductive research institutes would be scrapped while some others would be merged with relevant research units in universities.