Reps panel mull  ASCON/ PSIN  merger

From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja

The chairman of the panel, Victor Danzaria, at investigative hearing organised by ad-hoc committee, said the functions of two agencies were overlapping.

Danzaria said it was costing the government a lot of money to maintain agencies with similar responsibilities, noting that the practice cannot continue.

According to him, “counter productivity of established agencies is a fact that a lot of agencies led to a lot of loan we always approve as a National Assembly to maintain the organizations. These Adhoc Committee is to look at the productivity and the service delivery of these agencies.

“Another mandate of this committee is to ascertain root cause analysis of the regular bickering making established agencies government keeps spending money on. There agencies of government that don’t have enabling act and yet government still spends money on them. It is tough for this county to keep these agencies while we keep borrowing money to maintain them.

“Another mandate is to establish areas of mergers, synergies and justification of existence. The truth is even though you may have your enabling act, this Adhoc Committee would determine whether it should repealed, amended or taken away.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.”

The Director General of ASCON, Mrs Cecilia Gayya, who was at the investigative hearing  had told the lawmakers that the agency overlaps with PSIN in areas including training, consultancy and research.

Gayya explained  that while ASCON has an Act backing it, the PSIN did not.

The DG, while stating that the two institutions could exist side by side,called for a review of the ASCON Act so as  to broaden its mandate.