10 Leading Ministries, Departments And Agencies In 2019

By BODE GBADEBO




The year is coming to an end and there are government agencies that have either woken up to their responsibilities or recorded spectacular achievements. In this report, BODE GBADEBO presents some government agencies with a difference.


Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB)

With a N5 billion all-time high remittance in 2017, JAMB began a steady departure from the past by entrenching a new regime of transparency.

Sometime last month, the board introduced an innovative approach in curbing exam malpractices by directing all prospective candidates for its 2020 UTME to acquire the National Identification Number (NIN).

JAMB spokesman, Fabian Benjamin, said that the move was to ensure that the biometric and other necessary details of a candidate were captured to check examination malpractice.

“JAMB will, during the 2020 registration exercise, use the National Identity Number (NIN) generated after successful registration with the


National Identity Management Commission (NIMC).

“This includes the capturing of biometric and other necessary details for the registration of all prospective candidates. Henceforth, the NIN will be compulsory for the UTME registration,” he said.


Nigeria Customs Service (NCS)

Nigeria Customs Service is an independent customs service under the supervisory oversight of the Nigerian Ministry of Finance, responsible for the collection of customs revenue and anti-smuggling efforts.

Few weeks ago, it stepped up its anti-smuggling efforts by closing all land borders in order to check smuggling and cross-border crimes, a development that has attracted criticism and complaints from within and outside the country.

With its anti-smuggling efforts and technology-driven revenue collections, NCS has raked in unprecedented amount of money for the government in the last four years or so.


Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS)

This agency has, to an extent, reduced Nigeria’s dependence on oil revenue and the reasons for its success story is not far-fetched.

According to its chairman/CEO, Babatunde Fowler, a mixture of technology, new ways of taxation, ease of access to FIRS services by taxpayers, a sleuth of amnesty programmes, audit, collaboration with stakeholders in sharing data, a renewed focus on Value Added Tax (VAT) and taxation of idle property, taxpayer education and enlightenment, levying of tax on defaulting firms with idle property and targeting the bank accounts of billionaires and millionaires who are defaulting in tax, gave the nation N5.3 trillion in 2018, being the highest in the history of the FIRS, even with oil at $70 per barrel.

FIRS has not deviated from the above trajectory as it has consolidated on its achievements and is set to surpass its current record of unprecedented revenue collection in the years to come.


Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC)

Federal Road Safety Corps is the federal government agency with statutory responsibilities for road safety administration in Nigeria. FRSC is committed to making Nigerian roads one of the top 20 safest roads to drive on in the world by the year 2020 as encapsulated in the road safety perspective of the vision 2020 of the federal government.


Independent Corrupt Practices And Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC)

Established in 2004 alongside EFCC, ICPC has always operated in the shadows unlike its sister agency. Recently though, the agency discovered itself and launched itself back to public consciousness.

To its credit, Nigerians are now aware that some lawmakers diverted multi-million-naira constituency projects to their personal use. The anti-graft agency had no problem naming and shaming the culprits as well as recovering the diverted items.

Currently, ICPC is on the trail of some former public officials who soiled their hands while in office.


Economic And Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC)

One outstanding role the EFCC has played this year is assisting Nigeria secure a temporary reprieve in the $9.6bn Process and Industrial Developments Limited arbitral award against Nigeria by a United Kingdom commercial court.

This followed the commission’s investigation and consequent arraignment of P&ID Limited and P&ID Nigeria Limited on charges of fraud, intent to defraud and dealing in petroleum product without license.

P&ID representatives pled guilty to the charges, leading to the court ordering the closure of the companies and the forfeiture of their properties to the federal government of Nigeria.

Also, it secured 312 convictions in 2018 and 882 convictions between January and October, 2019, which represents over 200 per cent improvement in less than one year.

Meanwhile, the anti-graft agency’s intervention in the 2019 elections was unprecedented. For the very first time in the 15 years history of the commission, the EFCC, under Ibrahim Magu, intervened in the electoral process following the scourge of vote buying that had become pervasive.

The last but not the least in feats recorded by EFCC in the area of asset recovery. From January to September 2019, the Commission made monetary recoveries for both the Federal Government and third-party recoveries in the following sums: N64,721,161,510.01; $14,030,512.32; £4,644,493.00; and €53,325.00.

While properties recovered within the period include 261 automobiles, with 13 out of this figure on interim forfeiture and 248 finally forfeited, one farmland (interim forfeiture), one hotel (interim forfeiture), 40 real estate (35 on interim forfeiture), 40,000 litres of diesel, three fuel stations (interim forfeiture), 11 shops (interim forfeiture), two barges, one plaza (interim forfeitures) and two lands.


Assets Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON)

Despite its legal inhibitions, AMCON has been up and doing of recent. It threatened to publish, in Forbes-like manner, the names of who’s who on the corporation’s debtors’ list – few privileged Nigerians owing about N5trillion of bad loans from commercial banks.

The idea is to name and shame them, having exhausted all known tactics to no avail.

Perhaps AMCON’s last resort will work. Perhaps it will not work. Whatever it is, we wait and see.


Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC)

Two weeks ago, the state-run oil corporation made a breakthrough in its years of oil exploration in the northern part of the country.

It announced the discovery of hydrocarbon deposits in the Kolmani River II Well on the Upper Benue Trough, Gongola Basin, in the North-East. Recall that drilling of the Kolmani River II Well was inaugurated by President Muhammadu Buhari on February 2, 2019.

LEADERSHIP Friday reports that the discovery of oil and gas in commercial quantity in the Gongola Basin will attract foreign investment, generate employment for people to earn income and increase government revenues.


National Automotive Design And Development Council (NADDC)

Before now, the council was nowhere in the news for good or bad until now that it has a leadership with a requisite know-how of its core mandate.

The federal government has long talked about diversifying the nation’s oil-dependent economy but its actions have not always matched the talk.

Over the past few years, the automobile manufacturing industry has seemed like a plausible alternative. The hope is that it will help create thousands of jobs and draw large-scale investment from global car-makers, Nigeria’s government has been keen to tap into that potential.

To this end, NADDC was set up in May 2014 after a merger of previous agencies. Much of NADDC’s work has been guided by an automotive policy approved in 2013. The policy mainly aims to boost local car production and reduce vehicle imports.

To implement that policy over the coming years, the federal government turned to Jelani Aliyu, a Detroit-based car design veteran from General Motors (GM) who’s best known as the designer of its Chevy Volt, as the Director-General of NADDC and the story of the agency has been the same ever since.