President Bola Tinubu have scrapped the Niger Delta Ministry, and the Ministry of Sports Development.
The decisions were taken on Wednesday at the meeting of the FEC in Abuja, as seen on the X handle of the Special Adviser Information and Strategy to President Tinubu, Bayo Onanuga.
There will now be a Ministry of Regional Development to oversee all the Regional Development Commissions, such as the Niger Delta Development Commission, North West Development Commission, South West Development Commission, and the North East Development Commission.
The National Sports Commission will take over the role of the Ministry of Sports.
The FEC also approved the merger of the Ministry of Tourism with the Ministry of Culture and Creative Economy.
Despite the announcement, Onanuga did not state what would happen to the ministers in charge of the scrapped ministries, or how they would function henceforth.
The Niger Delta Ministry is being headed by Abubakar Momoh, with John Enoh being in charge of the Ministry of Sports Development.
The development comes following recent clamour for a reduction in the number of ministries and political officers in the country to reduce governance costs.
Again, the Federal Government had in June, reiterated its commitment to the implementation of the Stephen Oronsaye report aimed at reducing the cost of governance through merging, scrapping and relocating departments and agencies.
The Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, who spoke on the matter, said work was still in progress on the report.
Similarly, Onanuga had also said the Akume’s committee set up to implement the report, had yet to report back to the FEC as of June.
The 800-page Oronsaye report recommended that of the 541 statutory and non-statutory Federal Government parastatals, agencies, and commissions, 263 statutory agencies should be reduced to 161, 38 agencies abolished, 52 agencies merged, and 14 other ones should revert to departments in ministries.
Though the report was submitted to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan by the then Head of the Civil Service, Oronsaye in 2014, a former Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mohammed Adoke, rejected most of the recommendations.
