The Federal Government has told governing boards of parastatals, agencies and commissions that they lack powers to suspend or remove a Chief Executive appointed by the president.
The Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr. Boss Gida Mustapha, who said this yesterday in Abuja, also warned the boards not to interfere in the administration of agencies.
He was speaking at the induction programme for governing board members of some agencies, including federal universities and medical centres, organised by the Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR) and Partnership to Engage, Learn and Reform (PERL) of the Department for International Development (DFID).
According to him, the governing boards were expected to provide policy direction and implementation of programmes for the achievement of the mandates of the agencies.
Though the SGF did not give examples, he may be referring to the controversy over the suspension of the Executive Secretary (ES) of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Prof. Usman Yusuf, by its board.
The SGF noted that most governing boards were yet to clearly understand their roles in the corporate governance of the organisations.
“Some of the issues that have become recurring decimals are undue interference by board chairmen in the day to day activities of the respective agencies, blatant disregard for extant regulations guiding and restricting of board meetings; issuing directives to staff without recourse to the chief executive officer, thereby undermining authority and creating disharmony among personnel.
“Imposing disciplinary measures on chief executives without recourse to laid down procedure and approval from supervision authorities and using the labour unions as agents of distraction in the parastatals, among others. We should desist from these actions and utterances that continue to ridicule the government,” Mustapha said.
He told the board members to take their appointments seriously, warning that government would not hesitate to enforce disciplinary actions on anyone who went contrary to the terms of the appointment.
Earlier, the Acting Director-General of the BPSR, Mr Dasuki Arabi, said the objective of the induction was to enable board members to understand their roles and responsibilities and the behaviours required of them.
He said that while top-level federal civil servants like the permanent secretaries grow though the federal civil service and acquire wide public service knowledge and experiences in the conduct of government businesses, most CEOs and governing board members of federal agencies, to some extent, lack such knowledge and experience.
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