The organisation representing senior Public Servants in Nigeria says the Federal Government is making irregular appointments to the Public Service and extending the tenure of Permanent Secretaries and Directors beyond their legal limits.
President of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN), Bobboi Kiagama said that it was “disheartening to note that over the years, there has been an upsurge in the irregular appointments”.
Mr Kiagama said these included indiscriminate transfers of workers from the State Public Services and the private sector into the Federal Service without due regard for qualifications, years of experience and hierarchy.
“It is so bad that some officers who are appointed to these positions without the requisite qualifications are placed over and above their seniors,” Mr Kiagama said.
“This has demoralised the officers that have been compelled to report to their juniors in school and it has impacted negatively on productivity,” he said.
Mr Kiagama said the ASCSN demanded that all appointments and recruitments into the Federal Public Service should be done in line with the Federal Civil Service Commission Guidelines on Appointment, Promotion and Discipline.
“This will guarantee equity, fairness and justice as well as restore sanity in the system,” he said.
He said in 2009, the Federal Government introduced a tenure policy of two terms of four years for Permanent Secretaries and single eight-year terms for Directors.
“The rationale behind the policy was to look for ways to address the age-profile imbalance in the Civil Service, which had created an unusual situation where Deputy Directors and Assistant Directors were retiring ahead of their superiors,” Mr Kiagama said.
However, he now claimed that Directors and Permanent Secretaries were being “smuggled into the Public Service at younger ages”.
“Such distortion of recognised standard profiles of age versus grade levels not only makes a mockery of training, deployment and other resources management processes, but portends grave consequences for the future of the Civil Service,” Mr Kiagama said.
Abuja, 4 August 2020
