The panel might have done a good job of identifying the root and remote causes of the post-election violence that trailed President Goodluck Jonathan’s victory in April. But it has unwittingly fulfilled a purpose queuing behind the list of committees whose recommendations are hardly implemented to the letter, or at best only give birth to another panel to review the work of the previous committee and make a fresh recommendation.
This painful cycle is a reflection of a country that is barely scratching the surface when it comes to confronting its challenges.
The Lemu panel, which submitted its recommendations to Jonathan on Monday, was apt in capturing the frustration of creating ad hoc committees when their recommendations hardly ever get implemented by successive governments. In recent years, Nigeria has witnessed the proliferation of committees whose reports have only shelf value or have just totally disappeared from the implementation radar, like the Allison Ayida-led panel report on the squandering of the $12.5billion gulf oil windfall of 1991.
The Justice Bolarinwa Babalakin Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Bauchi State Civil Disturbance; the Kabiri-Whyte Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Kafanchan Disturbance; the Niki Tobi Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Plateau State Disturbance; the Justice Snakey Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Wase and Langtang Disturbances; the Justice Disu Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Plateau State Disturbances (which obviously came without implementing the Niki Tobi panel recommendations); the Prof. Tamuno panel of Inquiry on National Security and Justice Muhammadu Uwais Electoral Reform Committee have all come and gone but with little or no impact, owing to the neglect from the same government that commissioned them.
And all these are federal government funded panels alone. There are countless others, formed either by the state or local governments to look into anything from communal clashes to divorce cases involving a couple that belong to opposing political parties. All these wasteful adventures were reiterated to President Jonathan on Monday by the Lemu panel, perhaps, with the fear that its own recommendations might soon be consigned to civil servants’ shelves.
But the President’s remarks were quite typical – appreciative but hardly strong on specific promises of implementation. With the right political will, the presidents said, government could reduce the culture of impunity. But how precisely? “We will look at your recommendation and the Federal Executive Council will look at it and come out with a white paper,” was the president’s response.
How typical! Surprisingly, still, Jonathan isolated the issue of Jos which has remained in a state of daggers drawn with itself for years with an astonishing admission of naivety when he said that his administration had set up a fresh committee to look at the series of recommendations from the previous committees and panels of inquiry with a mandate to come out with a white paper at the end of the day. When this happens, perhaps with far reaching consequences, the president assured that “heavens will not fall.”
In his administration’s lexicon, ‘committee’ comes on the front page. Jonathan can even be said to be presiding over ‘a federation of committees’. At the infancy of his administration, the General T. Y Danjuma-led Presidential Advisory Council was the first to remind Jonathan of failed promises of previous administrations and how ideas generated from panels with tax payers’ money, which are never implemented, have become a case of arrested development.
A few months down the line, the President has responded by setting up yet another committee to tackle an aspect of the recommendations by the Danjuma panel. The new committee, led by the former Head of Service, Mr. Stephen Orosanye, is now reviewing all previous reports on the restructuring of government machinery.
It is intriguing that Orosanye would not consider the pruning down of federal parastatals as a recommendation he ought to have made to the President as the Head of Service in the first instance. The jobs, apparently gets done only when it comes from a designated committee, which is why he would still be the one to be used as the head of the committee that assessed the rot in the Niger Delta Development Commission. This is surprisingly in a government that already runs a bloated government full of ministers, special advisers and consultants.
It does not appear as though Aso Rock appreciates Charles Kettering’s counsel that if you want to kill any idea “get a committee working on it.” If the seat of power did, it is unlikely that an Economic management Committee under the headship of the Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo- Iweala, would have been formed as a super unit within the Federal Executive Council.
Nor would Jonathan have approved of a committee to review the United Nations Environment Programme (UNFP) report on Ogoniland just to make recommendations on the “immediate and long remedial action” for the region. Not only is this time-wasting culture laughable, it also runs contrary to Jonathan’s so-called transformation agenda.
Written by Steve Ayorinde
