House Committee Mulls ASCON, PSIN Merger

Udora Orizu in Abuja

The House of Representatives Adhoc Committee reviewing the duplication of government agencies is mulling the merger of the Administrative State College of Nigeria (AS ON) and the Public Service Institute of Nigeria (PSIN).

The Committee Chairman, Hon. Victor Danzaria, who said this when Director General of ASCON, Mrs Cecilia Gayya, appeared before it, said it was due to the overlapping function of both agencies. 

The lawmaker said it was costing the government a lot of money to maintain agencies with similar responsibilities. 

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 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 The truth is even though you may have your enabling act, this Adhoc Committee would determine whether it should repealed, amended or taken away.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, had earlier said the agency overlaps with PSIN in areas including training, consultancy and research. 

She said said while ASCON has an Act backing it, the PSIN did not. 

She called for a review of the ASCON Act to broaden its mandate.