The Director, Human Resource Management, Federal Ministry of Art, Culture and the Creative Economy/Tourism, Mr. Abdulkadir Idris Wakil has commended the conduct of the 2024 promotion examination conducted by the National Institute for Cultural Orientation (NICO).
Responding to questions on the conduct of this year’s examination exercise, the Director, who was at the Abuja center for the examination to represent the ministry in supervisory capacity, adjudged the arrangement of candidates and the entire conduct to be seamless as candidates participated actively and in an orderly manner.
He further expressed satisfaction in the exercise, saying he has confidence that the desire of staff to be promoted to the next level will be met.
Meanwhile, the examiner and Consultant to NICO, Mr. Augustus Ajibola who is also a Retired Director from the Ministry has called for the need to train and re-train staff of the Institute to be more conversant with the basic core of public service.
In his words, “It is shocking because people don’t know that questions from public service rules in promotion examination are administrative questions. As a public servant, you must know your PSR. It is your bible. As a public servant, you must also know your financial regulations. For instance, if you are to go abroad, you will know what your estacode is. So every public officer must know that”.
“You must also be conversant with current affairs. For instance, if you work for the federal government, how will you not know the sources of income of the government? That means they don’t apply themselves to the job”.
“They need a lot of capacity building, so I made sure to ask basic questions in the examination. There are some administrative questions like what is on concurrent list and exclusive list? Some people don’t even know what concurrent or exclusive lists is all about. How can you be a public servant and you don’t know these things? It means you are not in service”.
He therefore advised that NICO is a public service institution and questions for promotion examinations must revolve around public service rules, financial regulation and current affairs.
The promotion examination, which is a prerequisite for successful staff to be promoted to the next level was successfully conducted simultaneously in Abuja and across the regional and state offices of the institute.
A total number of two hundred and eight(208) members of staff participated in the exercise in the designated centers.
Comfort Onoja
M M Onotu
Corporate Affairs Unit
NICO, Abuja
