BPSR seeks ABU’s collaboration to strengthen Public Service Reforms

The Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR) has sought for collaboration with Ahmadu Bello University to bridge the gaps between
theories and practice to improve the policies developed by the bureau
which government was implementing.

Alhaji Ibrahim-Dasuki Arabi, Director-General of the bureau made the
appeal while presenting paper titled Dissecting Public Service Reforms
at a symposium organized by the Faculty of Administration, Ahmadu
Bello University (ABU) Zaria.

The Symposium was titled “Dissecting the Nigeria Public Service
Institution: Leadership, Governance and Service Delivery (Past,
Present and Future).

He said that engagement with universities was very important because
it will create room for collaboration between the bureau and
universities towards up-skilling the performance of a public servant
to enable them understand public service reforms and digitization
language of the government.

Arabi said the bureau has brought numerous reforms with a view to
harness the system to meet-up with the global demands; however some of
the reforms had to be reviewed due to the emerging challeneges.

He, therefore, restated the commitment of the bureau to address some
of the emerging challenges of Treasury Single Account, Pension Reforms
and other reforms towards repositioning the public service.

The Director General said the President has inaugurated a committee
which the bureau was heading to look at the reforms initiatives around
pension to offer solution to emerging challenges of pension reforms.

According to him, membership of that committee was coming from the
private sector, public services, association of pensioners and various
sectors government; we hope to provide solution to pension reform
challenges soon.

He noted that the government monetization programme was initially
celebrated as it enabled many civil servants to become landlords in
Abuja and other places, but now some negative impacts of the policy
were manifesting.

Arabi said government was poised to come up with a redesigned housing
programme to make acquisition of houses by public and civil servant
easy.

Similarly, Alhaji Suraj Oladini, Permanent Secretary, Human
Resources and Staff Development, National Assembly presented a paper
titled “ Dissecting National Assembly; Structure Functions and
Service Delivery.

Oladini maintained that Nigeria has the capacity to maintain two
chambers at the national assembly and urged the parliamentarian to
deploy merit in the appointment of legislative aides.
In his remarks, the Vice-Chancellor of the University Prof. Kabiru
Bala said the symposium was one of the activities designed to revive
the culture of intellectual discourse in the university.

He said ABU has been known to be the bedrock of given policy direction
to both the military and civilian government in Nigeria because of the
age-long tradition of the intellectual discourse, hence its decision
to revive symposiums such as this.

He said leadership and governance was very important and it was in
line with the ABU’s academic vision of linking the academia with
industry.

The Vice-Chancellor tasked the Faculty of Administration to look at
every aspect of the public service and start with the university by
examining and interrogating its own system to see if it offering the
required services as an institution.

“Has the university maintained the basic ethics of leadership for
service delivery as mentioned by the theme of this symposium, I want
the director the institute to note this.

“I want to x-ray our system and tell us whether it has failed or it
is working, are we serving the students as we ought to because we are
also a public servants,’’ Bala said.