Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has said that the federal government would conduct an aggressive accountability audit of various its agencies to remove bureaucratic bottlenecks.Speaking Wednesday night at the fifth anniversary celebration of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) held at the State House Banquet Hall in Abuja, Osinbajo said the audit is part of a renewed effort to further improve the country’s business environment and economy.According to him, what must be done in the coming months is for the federal government to “work with the agencies to implement a more aggressive accountability audit.””Where we identify the specific bottlenecks in systems possibly down to the particular desks where these problems arise; we may then come for agencies and officials who have failed or resisted change,” he said.The Vice President said the exercise would encourage more local and foreign investments and create more jobs and opportunities for Nigerians.He said in improving the country’s business climate and making it more attractive for foreign and local investors, government’s priority is creating jobs.He said the private sector players, particularly small and medium enterprises, remain the biggest job creators.“We must ensure that they are not hindered from doing business easily so they can produce the opportunities our nation needs,” he said.The Vice President said the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council has achieved the delivery of over 150 reforms and completed six National Action Plan (NAP).“As a result, Nigeria has moved an aggregate of 39 places on the World Bank Doing Business index since 2016, and was twice named as one of the top 10 most improved economies in the world in the last three cycles. Nigeria was also named one of only two African countries to make this highly prestigious list in 2019.“Similarly, the 2018 Subnational Doing Business report on Nigeria recorded unprecedented improvement, with 100% participation of States in the Right-of-Reply exercise. The World Economic Forum (WEF), in its 2018 Global Competitive Report, also recognized Nigeria’s business environment as one of the most entrepreneurial in the world, and highlighted Nigeria’s improved competitiveness in the enabling business environment,” he said.He said the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council’s reforms have “proved what is possible if we are hands-on and intentional in making it easy to do business in Nigeria.”“We were fortunate to have a smart and visionary team led by Dr. Jumoke Oduwole (Special Adviser to the President on Ease of Doing Business), who, with her team of public and private sector members, designed the series of reform initiatives and internationally recognized homegrown National Action Plans (NAPs) – 60-day accelerators designed to coordinate the effective delivery of priority reforms of select Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) annually.“At the federal level, the PEBEC secretariat also actively supports 15 priority public facing agencies and tracks 55 MDAs on the implementation of Executive Order 001 on Transparency and Efficiency of Pubic Service Delivery and the Council’s feedback mechanism – ReportGov.NG,” he said.Also speaking, the Minister of State for Industry, Trade and Investment, Ambassador Mariam Katagum, who presented PEBEC’s 5-year empirical impact assessment book and commemorative coffee book, said the books were “in keeping faith with the Council’s tradition in documenting its activities and to employ fact-based metrics to measure the impact of its reforms,” she said.She said the empirical impact assessment “was commissioned to assess the impact of reforms outlined in our National Action Plans,” adding that the commemorative coffee table book will “encourage those coming after us that, with purposeful leadership, we can achieve great feats.”
