The Federal Government will soon conduct an audit of the Federal Civil Service workforce. The audit, which President Bola Tinubu has already approved, aims to identify gaps in the staff strength and skill set of the Federal Civil Service with a view to addressing them.
Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC), Prof. Tunji Olaopa, who disclosed this in an interview on the sidelines of a three-day Strategy Retreat on the FCSC’s Strategic plan 2025-2029 in Abuja, said it is incorrect to say that Nigeria has a bloated civil service.
Olaopa said that what Nigeria has is a pool of workers, the majority of whose skills are no longer required and are therefore redundant.
He said that if one benchmarks the federal civil service workforce against that of other countries, one will discover that it is actually relatively small.
“But the problem is we have a huge number of staff who lack the requisite skills to function, while the skills that the system needs are scarce,” he said.
He said the logical thing to do is to retrain and realign those who are available and redeploy them.
The retreat was organised to set in motion a series of strategic processes that will transform the FCSC into a critical human resources management (HRM) expert advisory hub that the Federal Government can draw on.
He noted that the President himself has approved a human resources audit of the Federal Civil Service, the essence of which is to do a gap analysis of staff.
He noted that the President himself has approved a human resources audit of the Federal Civil Service, the essence of which is to do a gap analysis of staff.
He promised that the FCSC was committed to supporting the renewed hope agenda and the ambitions of the current administration of President Tinubu to make Nigeria a one-trillion-dollar economy by 2030.
Earlier while reading the communique issued at the end of the retreat, Olaopa said upon assumption of duty, the current leadership of the Federal Civil Service Commission conducted a rapid assessment and undertook a diagnosis that revealed the need to urgently reorient the commission on the path of mediocrity to a merit-based system devoid of nepotism and all sorts of patronage which compromises productivity, efficiency, effectiveness and cultural excellence.
“We also identified the imperative of modernising the commission as an institution with a robust sector supporting it to deliver on its mandate exceptionally while serving as a model for the wider public service,” he said.
He said that part of the outcome of the retreat is that the commission will put together a draft that will be further validated and approved by the commission’s leadership, a six-year, five-year strategic plan for 2025-2029, as well as introduce a performance-managed sector to support its internal operations.
He revealed that the retreat is the first-level technical stakeholder engagement, which will be followed by some other expanded stakeholder consultations involving partners from outside the commission.
