BARRING a last-minute change of heart by the Presidency, five agencies under the Culture and Tourism Ministry may cease to exist as the Steve Oronsaye committee on rationalisation of government ministries and agencies has thus recommended in its preliminary report.
The report, The Guardian learnt, is undergoing review by another panel with a view to issuing a White Paper on its implementation.
The affected agencies are the National Troupe of Nigeria (NTN); National Institute for Hospitality and Tourism Services (NIHOTOURS); Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilisation (CBAAC); National Gallery of Art (NGA) and the National Institute for Cultural Orientation (NICO).
Currently, the ministry supervises no fewer than 10 parastatals, including the Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation (NTDC); the National Orientation Agency (NOA); National Council for Arts and Culture (NCAC); National Commission for Museum and Monuments (NCMM) and the National Theatre complex.
As part of strategies to save cost and end alleged colossal waste of scarce resources occasioned by the proliferation of parastatals and ministries, the Federal Government, last year, set up the Oronsaye committee with the mandate to carry out a comprehensive review of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and recommend appropriate action accordingly.
A source close to the review panel disclosed that the committee proposed the existence of six parastatals that should service the Culture and Tourism Ministry namely, the NTD Commission; the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC); the NOA; National Commission for Arts and Culture (from what is currently NCAC), NCMM and the National Theatre Company of Nigeria.
The committee, it was gathered, recommended the merger of NIHOTOURS with the NTDC with the latter elevated to a commission status and charged with promoting tourism.
The committee noted that it was wasteful to continue to allow NIHOTOURS to operate as a separate parastatal since “it has not been able to justify its existence as the capacity building arm of the tourism industry”.
The committee also observed that it amounted to sheer waste for government to keep funding an institute that claims to provide capacity for hospitality and tourism services when indeed, there exists many private firms providing same services. It reportedly felt that an enlarged tourism commission would be able to handle the functions performed by NIHOTOURS, including regulation.
In the same vein, the committee observed that it was wasteful to continue to allow the National Theatre and the National Troupe to operate as separate parastatals since both agencies were established by the same decree (Decree 47 of 1991).
It noted that the two agencies had erroneously operated as separate parastatals while in fact they ought to have been operating as outfits or units of the same parastatal.
The committee recommended that both outfits be merged to form an organisation to be known as the National Theatre Company of Nigeria.
Similarly, the committee recommended that the NCAC should be elevated to the status of a commission. .
It made the recommendation upon the discovery of a close relationship between the functions of the NCAC and those of two other parastatals namely, the NGA and NICO.
The committee was of the view that NICO needed not exist as an autonomous parastatal with a board as it is merely a creation of commemorative event (the World Decade of Culture) organised by a unit of the ministry — the Department of Culture.
Although the committee recommended that the functions of the NICO could be given to the department that superintended its creation, it nevertheless favoured the recommendation that its functions be merged with that of the NCAC.
Again, the committee observed that the NGA was a creation of the NCAC before it assumed a status of a parastatal in 1993 and thus recommended that the NGA be merged with the NCAC and made into a commission to be called the National Commission for Arts and Culture.
The committee also recommended that the proposed Commission be structured into five departments namely, Administration and Finance, Research, Documentation and Orientation Services, National Gallery, as well as Art and Craft Design.
Also, the committee recommended that the NOA be returned to the Ministry of Information where members felt it rightly belonged. It was observed that as government’s main mobilisation machinery and information dissemination and management channel, the NOA has no business operating under the Culture and Tourism Ministry.
A member of staff at the NOA confirmed that high-level talks were on to get the agency excised from the Ministry of Culture.
He disclosed that the plan is to make NOA an independent commission that would be answerable to the Presidency.
The Oronsaye panel has also recommended that the NCMM should retain its full parastatal status.
However, the committee noted a close relationship between the functions of the NCMM and the CBAAC and argued that both agencies have related functions.
The committee stated that while the NCMM is entrusted with antiquities in the form of monuments and archaeological relics housed across the country, the CBAAC, a creation of Nigeria’s successful hosting of FESTAC in 1977, keeps relics of FESTAC 77 that are of similar status and value.
It, therefore, reasoned that it would amount to duplication keeping both storehouses of relics at the same time. For this reason, the panel strongly recommended the merger of the CBAAC and the NCMM.
Meanwhile, a source disclosed that some heads of the affected agencies were making frantic efforts to save them from merger or outright scrapping.
However, these moves appear late already, as government seems resolute to uphold the recommendations of its rationalisation committee.
