On re-constitution of SERVICOM ministerial committee

Abdullahi M. Gulloma

This week, the Head of Civil Service of the Federation Mrs. Winifred Oyo-Ita re-constituted the Ministerial SERVICOM Committee in her office. With  the reconstitution, Oyo-Ita said that she hopes the SERVICOM will play a crucial role in the task of entrenching the change mantra of the present administration.
Speaking at the inauguration of the committee in her office, Oyo-Ita called on civil servants to be efficient, productive, incorruptible and citizen-centred in the provision of services to Nigerians.

She said that in a bold move to re-invigorate SERVICOM, the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation and the SERVICOM Headquarters, held the first National Policy Dialogue on strategies for improving service delivery in government agencies.
She said her office had articulated a strategy on how to re-orientate the civil servants and take the service to its enviable height of serving as the machinery for efficient implementation of government policies and programmes.
The 2017-2019 Strategy Work Plan recently launched by Vice President Yemi Osibanjo, according to her, highlights government determination to redirect the civil service for better service delivery to Nigerians. She said that the strategy document unveiled a new ethos for the service couched in the acronym EPIC, which means Efficient, Productive, Incorruptible and Citizen- Centered civil service.

“The EPIC ethos is to be attained in part through a programme of culture change that will leverage on the re-invigoration and transformation of SERVICOM for citizen-centred service,” she said. “This initiative will emphasize the core values of the Civil Service such as meritocracy, helpfulness, transparency, professionalism, anonymity, integrity, discipline, impartiality, political neutrality, patriotism and accountability.”

Of course, if the system can be made to be efficient, the country will be better for it because it is the civil service that the government relies on to implement its programmes for which without efficiency little can be achieved.
Regrettably, though much is expected from the civil service, the inefficient and lackadaisical manner in which civil servants perform their functions had for long attracted criticisms and, on some occasions, condemnation. In fact, inefficiency has become synonymous with the service’s performance.

Therefore, the latest initiative being spearheaded by the Head of Service to reposition the civil service and make it efficient should be commended for where the civil servants are left inefficient, ineffective and unprepared for the tasks they are meant to accomplish, the government, in particular, and country will undoubtedly suffer.
Yet, for any civil service reform to be meaningful, an enabling environment must be created, welfare and social security of the civil servants must be addressed and spate of corruption, which has hindered productivity of the civil servants must be contained.

There should be more synergy between the public and private sector in the formulation and implementation of government policies to ensure proper management of resources of the state while any action and thing short of the standard expected should be sanctioned in line with provision of the law.
Essentially, reforming the civil service should be considered desirable for the socio-economic development of our country and, therefore, nothing should be spared to ensure success of the intended reform.

It is needless to say that how the matters are resolved will go a long way in determining how serious and sincere the present administration is on killing corruption before corruption, which is especially perpetrated in high places, kills the country and its peoples

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