CONCEPTUAL DISCOURSE
In African and Nigeria in particular, despite efforts been made to achieve absolute autonomy in management of public enterprises to achieve effectiveness and efficiency, there are several external control which government uses intervene the with day-to-day managerial activities in Nigeria. In this regard, it is important acknowledge those steps in which government employed intervening in the activities public enterprises. They however, take the forms control through the legislature political / materials control, treasury control, external audit of account and
miscellaneous bureaucratic control etc.
MULTIPLICITY OF CONTROL
The challenges of autonomy in public enterprises, they are as followings:
One of the time–tested methods of making public enterprises accountable to external bodies is that of legislation control. As the embodiment of the peoples will, parliament can legitimately claim to be acting in the name and interests of the owners of these enterprises. It performs its role, first, by scrutinizing enactments specifying the mandate of public enterprises, defining their structure, and outlining the preferred management and accounting system. In addition to passing the draft legislation into enabling laws/acts, parliament exercise control over the activities of the enterprises by making it mandatory for the enterprises to table their annual reports and accounts before it. Whether many of its members would be able to make sense out of the accounting information, statistical data, graphs and charts, is of course another matter. The accountants may worry account income and expenditure accounts, while the statisticians look at the statistical trends and projections with their magnifying glasses. For the majority of parliamentarians, what is likely to be of interest is the range of amenities and infrastructure projects located in their constituencies.
MINISTERIAL / POLITICAL CONTROL
This is a process by which the executive arm of government exercises control over the activities of public enterprises through the supervising or parent ministries, it influences the structure and management practices of the enterprises. These the responsibility of the ministries to the public enterprises and they as follows:
– They supervise the draft and cope of each enterprises
– Recommending to government the appointment of some person as chairman and members of the enterprises board of directors
– Participating in the selection of the chief executive and the top management team of the enterprises
– They equally serve as a channel of communication between the government and its agencies on one hand and the enterprise on the other hand.
– Firstly, the supervising ministry has the opportunity to control the enterprises at the inauguration stage. These means, at the time when ideal is coming to emerge as to the desirability for establishing a public enterprises. However, apart from examining the ideas and collection of data, they equally have the responsibility of ensuring that enabling laws is drafted. After a public enterprises has been established finally, its management would wish to amend the enabling laws to reflect changes in circumstances, and this implies that supervising ministry could have to be closely involved.
– Ministerial control does not stop at framing of enabling laws; they equally exercised control on the appointment of the chairman and member of each public enterprise. On the political side, the primary interest of pure political appointees is likely to be the material benefits of incumbency (contracts, fringe, benefits, and jobs for kinsman). Instead of providing the much –needed leadership in the area of policy formulation, the political appointees are apt to cover the career managers authority and functions. The political element, have there vital function apart from the strategic planning function they perform, they both represent the interest of their enterprises at the highest level of government. Secondly, their mere presence on the board confers political legitimacy on decision taken by management and as agent of the government. They are in a position to ensure that the decision taken by the board and the management are inline with government general policy.
Government also controls the enterprise by determining the composition of the top management. At times certain categories of appointment area classified as political. They are said to be political since the politicians decides who holds such appointments, and issues of political sensitivity, loyalty, ethnic balance etc have to be taken into account.
TREASURY CONTROL
The power wielded by the treasuring is undoubtedly one of the most effective ways in regulating the activities of the public enterprises, through the treasuring; the government gives grants and subvention to parastatales. The power to approve capital project and under write loan serves as an effective weapon against non-viable projects. Perhaps if the power had been exercised earlier, it would have been impossible for many public enterprises to incur the huge external debt that are creating serious problem for many African government today.
EXTERNAL AUDITY
The external audit of accounts and management system provide the government and the public with an over –view of how a public enterprise has allocated the resources entrusted to it. Even in the civil service, the audit function is carried out by the comptroller and the auditor general. His office, is however, beset with many problems. First, the office tends to be under –staffed. This makes it impossible for it to catch up with the backlog of work in ministries and departments. Secondly, to expect the few over worked staff in the comptrollers department to audit the account of public enterprises, it means, asking too much. In this case, since they (the comptroller staffs) have been trained to audit civil service account, they are likely to be ill prepared for the business oriented accounts in parastatal organization.
MISCELLANEOUS CONTROL
Government has the potential to control public enterprises in many other ways. This might come through government decision to raise tariff of direct that commodity price offered to small –scale farmers be increased. These and other forms of ministerial control can serve as useful purpose of they are designed to achieve specific objective such as the objective of public accountability, managerial efficiency and effectiveness or if they are expected to contribute to the realization of rationally defined social objectives.
RESEARCH FINDINGS
Whatever problem there are in balancing control with autonomy in public enterprises are simplified by the fact the weapon of control are also potential facilitators of autonomy and self government, legislative control for instance, can be preceded by, and combine with, a clear articulation of objectives, ministerial control can go hand in hand with careful attention to the selection of board and management teams. Treasuring controls are not antithetical to efforts designed to install sound management and financial control system.
External audit can proceed along side international audits, there would be no need to second guess enterprises board and management (or take unilateral decision which conflict with theirs) if government were to increase the opportunities for dialogue on policy decisions and the criteria for arriving at them.
Be the first to comment