More Government, Less Service, More Hunger

 By Adekunle Adekoya

Just as I was preparing to write this column, news filtered in that President Bola Tinubu has assented to the Nigerian Ports Economic Regulatory Agency (NPERA) Bill, 2026, paving the way for the establishment of a dedicated economic regulator for Nigeria’s port sector.

The news was sourced from a post on the Facebook page of Dr. Pius Akutah, Executive Secretary/CEO of the Nigerian Shippers Council. The enabling law for this new agency was titled Nigerian Port Economic Regulatory Agency Act, 2026. Meanwhile, in 2014, the Federal Government had designated the Nigerian Shippers’ Council as interim economic regulator of the ports pending enactment of a substantive law.

Already, the Federal Government of Nigeria has become a burgeoning leviathan with a staggering 1,316 ministries, departments, and agencies, or MDAS. What is more worrisome is that in 2012, the same FG had just 571 MDAs, a figure considered unwieldy, and prompted the Jonathan administration to commission a panel headed by a former head of the federal civil service, Steve Oronsaye to come up with ways and means of bringing down the number. The commission later became known as the Oronsaye panel, and its findings, on which the Federal Government had issued white papers on, two times, is now know as the Oronsaye Report.

Rather than for things to improve in this regard, which really is reducing the cost of governance, it gets worse, day by day. Between the Oronsaye Report of 2014 and 2025, 745 more MDAs had been created, including the one disowned by the Presidency — the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council, PFIPC. Take a look — the present administration is running 48 ministries, each one administratively headed by a permanent secretary. There are more permanent secretaries in the office of the Head of the Civil Service, in the Federal Civil Service Commission, in other statutory commissions, and in the State House itself. 

It might be safe to say that at any time, Nigeria may have no less than 80 permsecs, as they are called. Flip over to the MDAs, where their chief executives, ranking no less than a permsec go by various designations as director-general, executive secretary, or executive vice-chairman as the enabling law may have dictated. So, altogether, we are looking at no less than 1,316 mandarins whose upkeep doesn’t come cheap in any way.

And now, instead of seeing how to reduce the cost of this bloated governance machine, we are adding more. So we now have the Nigerian Ports Economic Regulatory Agency (NPERA), as the latest addition to the ever-growing list of MDAs. We now have 1,317 of them! What riles me, in this instance is why the Nigerian Shippers Council, NSC couldn’t continue as regulator of the ports. Certainly this would have been far more cost-effective than creating a brand new agency which will need its own office space, in addition to a director-general who will also employ a battery of assistants, including a legal adviser, all of whom will have accommodation and official cars procured for them at government expense. 

I may also add that this new agency will inevitably have its own guest house where extra-official schedules may be executed. By the time this new agency is fully operational, scores of billions would have been spent, billions that could be put to better use resettling the 3.8 million internally displaced persons, IDPs in conflict-ravaged states of Borno, Benue, Plateau, and others. Why this waste? Why are we so dedicated to waste?

In the days ahead, especially in the maritime sector, we are likely to see duplication or even, triplication of functions as the enabling law, we  are told, seeks to give the port economic regulator stronger legal backing to oversee economic activities in the sector, including issues relating to tariffs, rates, charges, competition, licensing of port service providers and the resolution of commercial disputes. Many of these are already being handled by the Nigerian Ports Authority, the Nigeria Customs Service, the Nigerian Shippers Council itself, and NIMASA.

So, we are likely going to have a situation resembling that of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, ICPC, and the Special Frauds Unit of the Nigeria Police Force. All are about fraud and corrupt practices, but you, the reader, can just imagine how much government is spending to keep the three anti-fraud organisations alive.

A job that can be done by one organisation is being done by three! Profligacy has no better definition, as I see it. What is likely to happen is that the operations of this brand new agency will impact on ports operations in a way that may make clearance of imports take longer. Issues already handled by NPA, NSC, and NIMASA will now have to be oversighted by the new agency. I wait to be proved wrong.

Meanwhile, what we are getting is more government, less service, and more hunger. Let me congratulate the party member waiting to be appointed director-general or executive secretary or executive vice-chairman of the new agency.

As they say, it is his/her time to “chop”. But jokes aside, instead of borrowing endlessly to keep 1,317 MDAs at work, why not switch into real work mode, and bring the number down to just about 300? The money that would be saved on recurrent expenditure of the scrapped MDAs alone will fatten the federation account faster than the president can see. No?

*Adekoya is a commentator on public issues