Reps committee mulls merger of ASCON, Public Service Institute

The House of Representatives ad hoc committee on review of the duplication of government agencies has mulled the merger of the Administrative State College of Nigeria (ASCON) and Public Service Institute of Nigeria (PSIN).

The ad hoc committee, chaired  by Hon Victor Danzaria, said this became necessary as both agencies have overlapping functions  and are costing the government a lot of money to maintain.

Danzaria made the observations when the director-general of ASCON, Mrs Cecilia Gayya, appeared before the committee in Abuja.

According to him, “the counter productivity of some established agencies gives room to approval of more loans than necessary at the National Assembly for the purpose of maintaining them.

“This ad-hoc committee is meant to look at the productivity and the service delivery of these agencies.”

He noted that the core mandate of the committee is to ascertain the root cause of the regular bickering about the established agencies  that the government keeps pumping money into.

“There are government agencies that do not have enabling Acts and yet the government keeps spending on them. It is tough for the country at the moment to keep these agencies while it keeps borrowing money to maintain them.

“Another key assignment of the committee is to establish areas of mergers, synergies and justification of existence of some of these agencies in question,” he said.

The director-general of ASCON, Mrs Cecilia Gayya, had earlier affirmed that her agency’s role is overlapping with that of PSIN in the areas of training, consultancy and research.

The DG explained that while ASCON had an Act backing it up, the PSIN had none.

She, however, concluded that there is a clash of responsibilities between the two institutions.

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

The DG of the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilisation, Oluwabunmi Amao, also appeared before the committee.