The House of Representatives ad-hoc committee to review the duplication of government agencies has mulled the merger of the Administrative State College of Nigeria (ASCON) and the Public Service Institute of Nigeria (PSIN).
Victor Danzaria, chairman of the ad-hoc committee said the consideration was due to the overlapping functions of both institutions.
According to Danzaria, it was costing the government a lot of money to maintain agencies with similar responsibilities.
The chairman spoke at the resumed hearing of the committee when Cecilia Gayya, the director general of ASCON appeared alongside her counterpart in the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization, Olueabunmi Amao.
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The lawmaker said: “Counter productivity of established agencies is a fact that a lot of agencies lead to a lot of loans we always approve as a National Assembly to maintain the organizations. This ad-hoc committee is looking at the productivity and the service delivery of these agencies.
“There are agencies of government that don’t have enabling acts and yet the government still spends money on them. It is tough for this county to keep these agencies while we keep borrowing money to maintain them.
“The truth is even though you may have your enabling act, this ad-hoc committee would determine whether it should be repealed, amended or taken away. The justification of the existence of your agencies we have to hear from you.
“If the service delivery is not there, if Nigeria is not gaining from the agency, why are they existing? We cannot continue to keep borrowing money to maintain most of these agencies that we feel need to be merged or taken away.”
On her part, the ASCON boss, Gayya said the college overlaps with PSIN in areas such as training, consultancy and research, and while the former has an enabling law, the latter does not but both can co-exist.
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