By Lucy Ogalue

The report  by the  Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) on the compliance with the Executive Order on Transparency and Efficiency in the Nigerian Business Environment shows that the Nigerian Content Development Board (NCDMB) emerged first with 83.06 per cent.

The report showed that the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), and the Nigerian Agricultural Quarantine Service came second and third with 82.85 and  69.85 per cent, respectively.

Others are the Nigerian Electricity Management Services Agency and the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) which secured the fourth and fifth positions, scoring 67.99 and 64.01 per cent respectively.

The Special Adviser to the President on PEBEC, Dr Jumoke Oduwole, said this while addressing journalists, during a stakeholder sensitisation session and presentation of its latest report, on Monday, in Abuja.

Oduwole said the report which spanned January to June 2023, had the agencies ranked on the basis of efficiency compliance.

She said the report assessed their ability to provide timely, cost-effective, and customer-friendly services, adding that their transparency assessment was also taken into account during the ranking process.

Oduwole, however, stressed the need to check Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to ensure they comply with the Federal Governments Executive Order Report.

According to Oduwole, the report fulfills the council’s continued commitment to track compliance with the Executive Order on promoting Transparency and Efficiency in the Nigerian business environment.

She said the PEBEC’s aim of monitoring MDAs was to facilitate easy access to public records and to combat corruption in the country.

She urged MDAs to leverage the findings in the report to deliver the much-needed improvement in transparency and efficiency of public service delivery.

According to her, this will help to improve the Nigerian business environment and drive the economy.

“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, coach and help them operate their service levels. And all of this is made public.

“It is a cumulative report. Agencies that have been consistent, are rewarded and agencies that have been consistently negative in performance, they keep getting those zeros as you see in the report.

“We also reward agencies who have improved. The report that we released today is for January to June 2023. This was even during a change of administration, because government is a continuum,” she said.

According to her, agencies that have been consistent are to be highly commended for their diligence regardless of what is happening politically.

Oduwole said: “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 will say, this list is not complete; come today, come tomorrow.

“This is also a way to check 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.”

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that 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.