Lawyers on Saturday expressed mixed opinions on the call for a review of the Stephen Oronsaye Report by the House of Representatives last week.

Speaking with Sunday PUNCH, some of them argued that implementing a 12-year-old report without some adjustments would cause more harm than good in the operations of government agencies and parastatals.

Others, however, said there was nothing wrong if the report was implemented holistically without a review.

Former President Goodluck Jonathan had in 2012 set up the presidential committee on rationalisation and restructuring of Federal Government parastatals, commissions, and agencies.

The committee headed by the then head of the civil service of the federation, Steve Oronsaye, recommended the scrapping and merging of 220 out of the then-existing 541 government agencies.

President Bola Tinubu last week called for the immediate implementation of the report, 12 years after it was submitted with far-reaching recommendations for the restructuring of government agencies.

However, moving a motion of urgent public importance on the floor of the House of Representatives last Thursday, three lawmakers: Kama Nkemkanma, Olumide Osoba and Gaza Gbefi noted that the Oronsaye report warned that if implemented without a review, the government might end up incurring more cost, contrary to the purpose of constituting the committee in the first instance.

A senior advocate of Nigeria, Mike Ozekhome, said the report did not need a review.

“What are they reviewing again? The usual Nigerian way of killing a laudable project is to call for a review. Review plus review, multiplied by review, divided by review, is nothing and can never produce any useful results.

“This is why the report has remained unimplemented and shelved away to gather dust in the cold to date. This report has gone through three presidents: Jonathan, (Muhammadu) Buhari, and now Tinubu, in nearly two decades,” he said.

But a constitutional lawyer, Abdul Mahmud questioned the honesty in the Federal Government’s call for the implementation of the report.

He said, “There has been a culture of gimmicks built around the Oronsaye report over the years. Every president – from Jonathan to Tinubu, with (Muhammadu) Buhari in between, makes policy statements about its implementation without pushing the envelope at the end of the day.

“The Oronsaye report has become the political can presidents kick around, literally. How presidents who are not sworn to or committed to running lean governments can implement a report whose core principle is to streamline government’s business in such a way that it reduces costs of governance and increases efficiency beats me.”

Also speaking, the Executive Director, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, Auwal Rafsanjani described President Tinubu’s approval of the implementation of the report as a welcome development.

He added, “While we welcome and appreciate the approval by the President for the implementation of the report which significantly reduces the cost of governance and harmonises the working of the government agencies, we are greatly concerned that the President is taking these bold steps in a hasty manner without due consultation with the members of the National Assembly on the manner in which these agencies should be merged or scrapped.”