By Dwelleth Morountodun
The Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HoSF) Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan, on Tuesday said Federal Government through transparent mechanism continued to explore possible ways to bridge the unemployment gap in the country by instituting ways and means of ensuring that the right people are recruited into the public service for national growth and development.
She said, amultipronged and crosscutting approach, especially through the various social safety net programmes which drives the government’s ambition to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) and to lift more than 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in the next 10 years.
Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan, made the disclosure while delivering a keynote address at the 4TH National Policy Dialogue on “Entrenching Transparency in Public Service Recruitment in Nigeria’’ organised by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) on Tuesday, in Abuja.
The HoS stated that with the institutionalization of the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS), the Federal Government has been able to track fake employments thereby reducing the risk of employing less efficient, unqualified and undependable personnel to handle the affairs of government.
According to her, in 2021, about 1000 fake letters were turned-in and just a week ago about 500 of such letters were brought to OHCSF for the removal of such officers from the IPPIS platform.
She also harped on the acquisition of skills to reduce the rate of dependence on public service jobs. According to her, this will reduce the high level of extortion in the area of recruitment, which permeates every sector of the economy.
“The country’s unemployment problem has left job seekers at the mercy of unscrupulous elements who extort and defraud them by exploiting their very desperate conditions, and it should be emphasised that no sector is spared from the antics of the perpetrators.”
She advocated for a merit-based recruitment system in public service such as that of India, which is also diversed. To get it right in a transparent and accountable manner, the HoSF encouraged the digitalisation of recruitment processes through the use of e-recruitment solutions in order to eliminate human contact to the barest; private sector partnership as a window to showcasing the capacity of the civil service.
She added that both appointees of the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC) and the Presidency should undergo due recruitment processes to ensure that only the right and best candidates for the job emerge.
Earlier in his remarks, the Chairman of the ICPC, Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye SAN, emphasised the need for the Policy Dialogue sessions, saying that indiscriminate recruitment has negatively impacted on personnel budget such that government personnel wage bill has continued to rise due to recruitment scams
The Commission, continues to receive tons of cases bordering on fraudulent recruitment from complicit individuals and institutions, as well as cases of fake certificates. All these issues arise and persist due to lack of transparency in the initial recruitment processes, he opined.