Head of Federal Parastatals & Agencies

A parastatal is a government-owned organisation that operates with a degree of independence from the ministry that supervises it. Each is established by its own Act of the National Assembly, which sets out what it may do, and each has a governing board and a chief executive rather than being run directly by a minister. Parastatals are funded wholly or partly from public money and remain accountable to government, but they keep separate accounts and can sue and be sued in their own name. In everyday Nigerian usage the word covers federal agencies, commissions, authorities, boards and state-owned companies alike.

A ministry is a core department of government, headed by a minister and staffed by career civil servants; it makes policy and is part of the federal government itself. A parastatal is a separate legal entity created by statute to implement policy or regulate a sector, headed by a director-general, executive chairman or managing director and overseen by a board. Ministries supervise parastatals: the Federal Ministry of Education, for example, supervises JAMB and the National Universities Commission. Parastatal staff are not always civil servants and their conditions of service are often set by their own board.

Well-known federal parastatals include the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which conducts elections; the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), which issues currency and regulates banks; the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which investigates financial crime; NNPC Limited, the national oil company; the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), which runs the UTME; the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC); the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC); and the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). The table above lists 50 of them with their current heads.

The President appoints the heads of federal parastatals, usually on the recommendation of the supervising minister and in line with the parastatal's enabling Act. For the most senior offices the appointment must also be confirmed by the Senate — the INEC chairman and national commissioners and the Governor and deputy governors of the Central Bank are appointed this way. Governing board members are appointed on the same basis, and federal character rules require appointments to be spread across the states and geopolitical zones. Tenures are fixed by the enabling law, commonly four or five years and renewable once.