By Chidiebere Ugwu
The Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) on Monday released the 2023 Half Year Report, with the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), Standards Organization of Nigeria (SON), and the Nigerian Agricultural Quarantine Service (NAQS) have emerged as overall top-performing agencies in compliance with the 2022 Executive Order 1.
The report which spawned January to June 2023, had the agencies ranked on the basis of efficiency compliance, which assesses their ability to provide timely, cost-effective, and customer-friendly services. Additionally, their transparency assessment was taken into account during the ranking process.
The PEBEC 2023 Executive Order Compliance Report assesses the level of implementation of the various executive orders issued by the government to facilitate ease of doing business in Nigeria.
The report, however, includes an evaluation of both federal agencies and state governments in their adherence to the directives outlined in the executive orders.
Others that made up five top performers are: Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), Nigerian Electricity Management Services Agency (NEMSA), Federal Competition & Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) Nigerian Export-Import Bank (NEXIM), and Corporate Affairs Commission, (CAC), among others.
Addressing journalists at PEBEC sensitization workshop on the Business Facilitation Act 2022 and Reportgov. ng, held on Monday, in Abuja, the Special Adviser to the President, Ease of Doing Business/PEBEC Secretary, Dr Jumoke Oduwole, stressed the need for checks in the MDAs as part of efforts to ensure complete compliance to the executive order.
She added that the reason PEBEC is closely monitoring MDAs is not only to facilitate easy access to public records but also to combat corruption in the country.
She said: “The ease of doing business intervention is an enabler. This is where public and civil servants deliver the actual work and the PEBEC is a facilitator. We help them to track what they’re doing. We encourage them, we coach on areas. So, we make them understand the template we help them to operate their service levels, agreements, and everything is made public so the report is available.
“It’s a cumulative report. So, that means that agencies that have been consistent, are rewarded for that consistency and agencies that have been consistently negative in performance, they keep getting those zeros and that’s just there. There is no how we can help them.
“We also reward agencies who have improved so you have a section that speaks to agencies who are maybe not paying attention to EO1 Compliance in the past, but have moved up on some steps because it’s a monthly thing.
“The report that we released today is January to June 2023. This was even during election time, this was during a change of administration time, so the agencies that were able to stay consistent because government is a continuum.
“Those are the agencies that are really to become calm. They’re really to be praised for that level of concentration and diligence that regardless of what’s happening politically, government Is there public and civil servants are there to serve Nigerian businesses to serve Nigerians and to make it a progressively easier place to start and do business.
“As you know, the work that we are doing is to make it faster, cheaper for businesses to engage with public sector. We don’t have to come to an office four times to do the same thing. You don’t have to come phoning and they’ll say, this list is not complete; come today come tomorrow.
“This is also a way to checkmate corruption, because we’re looking at automation, we’re telling them automate your processes, so not NAFDAC, SON, CAC, FIRS you see we give a lot of credence to agencies that are using technology.”
Also speaking during the event, Mr. Amadi Ikpe, the Desk Officer for the Service Delivery Compliance for Nigerian Agriculture Quarantine Service, said PEBEC interventions have been great, stressing that before PEBEC, trade facilitation was not at the pace that it is currently.
Ikpe who represented the Reform Champion at the workshop said: “PEBEC brought in a structure that helps to deal with all the challenges that trade facilitation had been facing so far without having individuals to be physically involved in the process.
“That is to say that you have a structure that helps to prevent rent seeking without policing the people. You have a process to evaluate how well you are serving the people and areas you can improve on without having to think too far. So they put in data analytics into their system and that is what has made it smooth.
“The figures are there, and you know numbers don’t lie. So that has helped to improve trade facilitation so far and has helped us as agencies that give this services at the border to improve our processes on our own. Their reporting system helps gather information and has been more critical to our own processes and our standard of operations than we believe it would have been” he said.
