The Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC), Prof. Tunji Olaopa, has said it is wrong to say that Nigeria has a bloated civil service.
Prof. Olaopa, who spoke in an interview on the sidelines of a three-day FCSC Strategy Retreat which ended yesterday in Abuja, said what Nigeria has is a pool of workers, majority of whose skills are no more required and are therefore redundant.
He said if one benchmarks the workforce of the federal civil service against other countries, one will discover that the federal civil service workforce is actually small.
“But the problem is we have a huge number of staff, most of whom 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 those that 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 promised that the FCSC was committed to supporting the Renewed Hope agenda and the ambitions of the current administration of President Bola Tinubu to make Nigeria a one trillion dollar economy by 2030.
Earlier, while reading the communiqué issued at the end of the retreat, Prof. 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 from the path of mediocrity to a merit-based system devoid of nepotism and all sorts of patronage which compromise 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 part of the outcome of the retreat is that the Commission will put together a draft that would be further validated and approved by the leadership of the Commission as a six five-year strategic plan 2025–2029, as well as introduce a performance-managed sector to support its internal operation.
He revealed that the retreat is the first-level technical stakeholder engagement, which will be followed with some other expanded stakeholders’ consultations involving partners from outside of the Commission.
