14 Years On, Oronsaye Reform Fails to Shrink Nigeria’s Bureaucracy
Fourteen years after a landmark panel handed the Federal Government a blueprint to shrink its sprawling bureaucracy, the machinery of state has grown larger rather than leaner, with newly created ministries, commissions and agencies adding at least N1.13 trillion to the cost of running government in the 2026 fiscal year.
The figure captures a widening gap between promise and practice. In February 2024, President Bola Tinubu approved the implementation of the Stephen Oronsaye Report, the most detailed official attempt yet to rationalise Nigeria’s federal institutions and curb the cost of governance. More than two years on, the reform has stalled, while the government has continued to expand its footprint through fresh institutions, many of which duplicate functions already performed by existing bodies.
An analysis of the 2026 appropriation shows that six ministries and a cluster of regional development commissions established or expanded under the current administration account for roughly N1.13 trillion in allocations. The Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy received about N149.2 billion, the Ministry of Livestock Development N81.19 billion, the Ministry of Gas Resources N71.59 billion, the Ministry of Art, Culture, Tourism and Creative Economy N70.3 billion, the Ministry of Regional Development N27.23 billion, and the Ministry of Steel Development N21.52 billion. The Ministry of Gas Resources carries no separate budget of its own and is administered under the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, raising questions about the rationale for its standing.
The regional development commissions form the larger share. The bodies covering the North West, South West, South East, South South and North Central geopolitical zones received a combined N705.61 billion, comprising N145.61 billion for the North West and N140 billion each for the other four. Taken together with the ministries, the allocations reach about N1.13 trillion, a sum that sits awkwardly beside a reform whose central purpose was to reduce, not multiply, the number of federal establishments.
The paradox extends beyond new creations. Several agencies that the Oronsaye panel recommended for abolition, merger or absorption remain fully operational, complete with boards, chief executives, staff and annual allocations.
The clearest example is the National Productivity Centre, which the committee recommended scrapping. Earlier official estimates put the potential yearly saving from its abolition at about N2.7 billion. Yet the 2026 budget provides roughly N110.68 billion for the centre under the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, more than 60 per cent of the ministry’s total allocation of about N183.63 billion. The provision is more than 40 times the saving once projected from closing it down, and the centre’s budget lines include activities well beyond its core productivity mandate, among them agricultural inputs, road works and medical outreach.
Other cases follow the same pattern. The Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate, whose functions were to be transferred to the Ministry of Finance, continued to operate as a standalone body with a dedicated appropriation of about N4.72 billion in the 2025 budget. The National Land Development Authority, recommended for return to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, saw its allocation rise from about N7.43 billion in 2025 to N25 billion in 2026. The Federal Character Commission, also earmarked for abolition, defended a 2026 allocation of about N6.5 billion before the Senate on the grounds that it monitors compliance across more than 700 MDAs. The Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria, recommended for winding down after the repeal of its enabling law, retained an allocation of about N1.99 billion.
Even approved mergers have not translated into structural change. The Federal Executive Council approved the merger of the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission with the Bureau of Public Enterprises, yet the commission still appears as a standalone entity in the 2026 budget with about N748.4 million in capital provision. A recurring obstacle is that agencies slated for scrapping continue to rest on enabling laws that have neither been repealed nor amended, leaving their legal existence intact regardless of executive pronouncements.
Alongside the retained bodies, questions have grown around institutions whose purposes overlap sharply with existing ones. The Nigeria Ports Economic Regulatory Agency, established in 2026, has revived debate over the continued relevance of the Nigerian Shippers Council and whether its functions collide with those of the Nigerian Ports Authority. The Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council, at one point disowned by the Presidency, remains the subject of inquiry, while the National Brands Development and Made in Nigeria Special Project Office has drawn fresh scrutiny.
A further complication is that some newly established bodies, including the Nigerian Education Loan Fund, the Nigerian Independent System Operator and the National Health Technology and Data Analytics Office, carry no clearly identifiable budget lines, raising questions about how they are funded and reconciled within the wider fiscal framework.
The trend runs against the grain of the government’s stated fiscal discipline. In the 2026 budget, presented at N58.18 trillion before the National Assembly raised it to about N68.32 trillion, recurrent non-debt spending was set at N15.25 trillion and debt servicing at N15.52 trillion. Analysts have long noted that recurrent expenditure, covering salaries, allowances and overheads, consumes a large share of the national budget, a burden that new agencies only deepen. One commentary put the number of MDAs created between the 2014 white paper on the Oronsaye Report and 2025 at 745, against an administration currently running dozens of ministries.
The Oronsaye Report has outlived successive attempts to act on it. The Presidential Committee on the Restructuring and Rationalisation of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies was set up in 2011 by former President Goodluck Jonathan and chaired by a former Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Stephen Oronsaye. Submitted in April 2012, the report examined 541 statutory and non statutory federal institutions. It recommended reducing the number of statutory agencies from 263 to 161, abolishing 38, merging 52, reverting 14 to departments within ministries and subjecting 89 others to a management audit. An early estimate suggested the government could save more than N241 billion from implementation.
The Jonathan administration issued a white paper in 2014. The Buhari administration produced a second white paper in August 2022 but did not implement the recommendations. When President Tinubu approved implementation in February 2024, setting up an eight member committee with a twelve week deadline, the scope announced was narrower than the original report. It covered the scrapping of two agencies, the merger of about 29, the subsuming of several others and the relocation of four, rather than the full slate of 38 abolitions and 52 mergers. Independent assessments at the time estimated that even partial implementation could see about 102 agency heads lose their positions, a political cost that helps explain the persistent resistance.
That resistance is at the heart of why the reform keeps resurfacing without resolution. Observers argue that the problem is no longer diagnostic but political. A retired official of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Dr Yunana Bature, has argued that the weaknesses in the public sector architecture are already well understood, and that the real test is whether government is prepared to confront the interests that benefit from the status quo. He has urged the authorities to publish a baseline showing the annual cost of the affected agencies and the savings expected from restructuring, warning that without such figures the exercise risks becoming another round of paperwork.
An investment banker, Tolulope Alayande, has made a related point, cautioning that scrapping an agency while transferring its staff, offices, vehicles and functions to another body simply renames bureaucracy rather than reducing it. In his view, Nigeria does not need fewer public responsibilities so much as fewer institutions performing the same ones, and the measure of success should be whether reform lowers the cost of governance, shortens administrative processes and frees resources for infrastructure, health, education and jobs.
What is confirmed is that the report remains formally adopted and that agencies once marked for abolition continue to draw billions from the treasury. What remains unresolved is whether the government will translate its directives into repealed laws, dismantled structures and verifiable savings, or whether the Oronsaye Report will pass to a fourth administration as unfinished business.