No doubt as the President of a country, his duty is to set targets that will trigger deliverables with the sub- units which are either the game changers or deceivers to the expectations of the President and Nigerians. The Ministries, Departments and Agencies ( MDAs) in the Nigerian setting are the Foot Soldiers that will either make or mar the performance expectations of Mr President.
In this setting, the Permanent Secretaries of the Ministries are the Headmasters, while the Directors and other staff of the MDAs are pupils carrying out the game plan. While, the Minister or Head of the MDAs are like spectators waiting for the result to come. That is depending on the deep knowledge of both in the area and the system they are overseeing.
In this scenario, both the Minister and the Agency Heads ( mostly politicians) successes are totally dependent on the personnel who are on ground to make him or her shine. In this case the axiom , “what you don’t know senior you is applied”.
In my part one of this Observation, I talk about the signing of the Performance Bond ( PB), his significance and what its intended to achieve, the deliverables on the the Short, Medium and Long term.
After the signing of the PB by the Ministers from the President , we have seen in the last few weeks, the various agencies in the Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy using tax payers money to organised retreats and seminars in five star hotels allegedly claiming to educate their Management Staff on the Performance Bond agreement signed with the Minister. A good move you may say. But remember is taxpayers money , so they don’t have anything to lose by doing that, whether they fail or succeed.
THE MISSING LINK
Taking a cursory look at the Nigerian maritime industry and the agencies that make up the the Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy. Namely , NPA, NIMASA, NSC, NIWA, MAN, Oron and CRFFN, all of them are mostly revenue generating agencies and totally dependent on the activities of private organisations and individuals to get the bogus funds they are enjoying .
It is a known fact that all the agencies of government in the Ministry cannot get a dime to play with without the private organisations and individuals paying their dues for such to happen. Fact check shows that, the NPA, NIMASA, NSC , MAN, Oron and CRFFN all depended on the revenue from either taxes, levies or fines that accrues from ships, shipping companies, terminal operators and the likes. That means if no ship berth in Nigerian waters which is from importers , operators and practitioners , all the agencies bouncing with huge revenue and extravagant expenditures will die . Even NIWA, if the private organisations don’t remit their expected funds from their businesses on the Waterways, can NIWA survive?
The point am making is that, often times , the government and it’s agents always look down on the revenue initiators and payers and move ahead to do their things as if they are the ones or is their efforts that is bringing the revenue the are spending .
From the trajectory, the President has signed the Performance Bond with the Minister, the Minister has in turn signed it with the Agencies Heads, the Agencies Heads have inturn used the money generated by stakeholders to hold various retreats in big hotels allegedly claiming to educate their staff on the PB as entrusted on them by the Minister.
The question now is, who will host or educate the stakeholders , who are the revenue generators on what they are expected to do and their benefits.? Less I forgot, the media too are like orphanages in this PB game.
Suffice to say that, even though we may try to adopt a different strategy , but with the same style, if all stakeholders, especially the revenue generators, the media and other stakeholders who are critical parties to the success and actualization of the PB, we may be dancing to the political gallary as usual , while we remain in the same spot, despite the PB.
Our Observation team is monitoring the system , especially as we enter 2024 with a national budget of
N27.5Trillion being the first budget of the RENEWED HOPE agenda to see how the PB will make impact, even with more than six months of the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s regime in office.
Innocent Orok is a Journalist based in Lagos State.
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