From Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja
The Federal Government has reiterated commitment to through various means continued to explore possible ways to bridge the unemployment gap in the country.
According to the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan, 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, said government is committed by instituting ways and means of ensuring that the right people are recruited into the public service for national growth and development.
She said this will be done through: “a multi-pronged 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 and to lift more than 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in the next 10 years.”
Yemi-Esan 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. Adding that, 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.”
Yemi-Esan, 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, she 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, adding 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, Bolaji Owasanoye, 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, he said, has continued to receive tons of cases bordering on fraudulent recruitment from complicit individuals and institutions, as well as cases of fake certificates. He added that all these issues arise and persist due to lack of transparency in the initial recruitment processes.
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