What are the functions of ministries in a Country? (Part II), by Usman Sarki

“The price of greatness is responsibility” – Winston Churchill

The paradox of ministries and public institutions becomes even more striking when we compare the lethargy of official bureaucracy with the audacity of private initiative. Without any ministry, department, agency or security outfit under his direct control or tutelage, AlhajiAlikoDangote conceived and constructed one of the most stupendous industrial projects in the world, a refinery that today stands among the modern wonders of private enterprise.

The Dangote Refinery, with a stated capacity of 650,000 barrels per day, has become a symbol of industrial ambition, capital mobilisation, engineering organisation and managerial will. That such a project could be executed by an African within the same Nigerian environment in which public projects routinely fail should compel deep national reflection.

The contrast with Nigeria’s government-owned refineries is sobering. For decades, the refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna, under the control or supervision of the national oil company, have stood as monuments to public-sector frustration, repeated turnaround maintenance, abandoned expectations, national moral bankruptcy and institutional failure. One private entrepreneur, operating within the incomprehensible constraints of the Nigerian environment, could mobilise capital, technology, organisation and discipline to build a refinery of global consequence.

Meanwhile, state institutions with ministries, boards, budgets, committees, consultants, official supervision and decades of accumulated expenditure are unable to make existing refineries function reliably. The issue is not merely ownership. It is seriousness, moral purpose, accountability and execution.

Nor is Dangote alone in this regard. Other Nigerian businessmen and women, industrialists and entrepreneurs, through intrepid endeavour, courage, discipline, organisation and know-how, have created functional industries that enrich the business environment and add to the economic viability of our country. They have demonstrated that Nigerians are not lacking in ingenuity, imagination, enterprise or capacity. What is often lacking is the institutional discipline that converts national resources and plans into public results.

The existence of thousands of abandoned projects across the country says even more about the capacities of ministries, departments and agencies to fail than about their ability to excel. The often-cited figure of 11,886 abandoned federal government projects is not merely a statistic. It is an indictment of a governance culture in which projects are conceived with fanfare, announced with ceremony, funded with public money and then left to decay in silence. These abandoned projects are monuments to broken planning, weak supervision, poor continuity, defective procurement, political vanity and the absence of institutional memory.

This is not an argument for a minimalist state that abandons citizens to the mercy of markets and private improvisation. On the contrary, it is an argument for a stronger, more intelligent, more perceptive, more disciplined, more sophisticated and more effective state. The Nigerian state does not suffer from having too much capacity. It suffers from having too many structures and too little capacity. It is present in form but absent in effect. It announces itself through titles, convoys and ceremonies, but disappears when citizens need water, security, justice, electricity, roads, schools and hospitals.

The creation of regional development commissions to duplicate and replicate the work of state governments and ministries, and then to fail like them, tells us more about the myopia of our vision than the depth of our reasoning. Instead of asking why existing states, ministries, departments and agencies are unable to deliver development, we create new bodies beside them, above them or around them, as if multiplication by itself can produce capacity.

When the same political culture, procurement habits, bureaucratic delays, weak supervision and absence of accountability are transferred into the new institutions, their fate becomes predictable. They inherit the weaknesses of the system they were created to correct and lose the virtues of prudence and rationality.

This is how a country ends up with an expanding architecture of development and a shrinking reality of development. Ministries, departments and agencies remain, commissions are added, boards are inaugurated, budgets are appropriated if at all, offices are opened and vehicles are purchased. But the roads remain unfinished, the schools remain weak, the hospitals remain distressed, the farms remain unsupported, and the citizens remain unconvinced. The result is not development administration but administrative congestion.

Nigeria must therefore conduct a serious audit of its ministries, departments and agencies. In doing so, it does not need to start from a blank slate. The Oronsaye Report of 2012, left for dead for far too long, remains one of the most important official attempts to confront the duplication, waste and irrationality of the Nigerian administrative structure. Its recommendations on merging, scrapping, relocating and reverting some agencies to departments within ministries should be revisited with seriousness, courage and practical wisdom.

The aim should not be punishment, political drama or cosmetic downsizing, but the streamlining of the offices of state, the reduction of waste, and the creation of a government that is more efficient, cost-effective and capable of delivering results.

A serious country cannot continue like this. Ministries must be compelled to justify their existence through outcomes. Ministers must be judged not by eloquence, loyalty or visibility, but by delivery. Permanent secretaries and directors must become custodians of competence, not merely guardians of files and procedure. Budgets must be tied to measurable objectives if and when they are passed. Public reporting must become routine. Citizens must know what each ministry promised, what it received, what it spent, how many people are on its payrolls, and what it achieved.

There is also a need to recover the true meaning of public administration as an instrument of national service. A ministry should not merely exist because it has always existed. It should exist because it solves a problem that no other institution can solve more effectively and efficiently. A department should not survive because its officers are accustomed to its routines. It should survive only if its functions remain necessary, measurable and productive.

An agency should not be preserved merely because abolition would offend vested interests. It should be preserved only if it advances the welfare, security, prosperity or dignity of citizens.

The British comedy series with which I began this article was funny because it revealed the absurdities of bureaucracy in a society where institutions still broadly worked. In Nigeria, the matter is less funny and becomes deadly because our absurdities carry heavier human costs. A failed ministry is not merely an administrative embarrassment. It may mean children without education, patients without treatment, farmers without support, roads without safety, youths without opportunity and citizens without hope but left hungry and destitute.

A ministry that does not minister to the needs of the people has betrayed its name. A department that does not deepen public welfare has lost its purpose. An agency that does not act in the public interest has become a burden. Nigeria does not need more buildings carrying official titles or more vehicles conveying officials around in vexatious convoys. It needs institutions that work, policies that produce results, officials who understand duty, and a state that remembers why it exists.

The ultimate measure of a ministry is not its presence in the federal gazette, the pages of newspapers, its place in the budget, its convoy on the road, or its minister on television.

The ultimate measure is the condition of the people whose lives it was created to improve. Until that becomes the standard by which we judge government, we shall continue to live in a country rich in ministries but poor in results.

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