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 challenges.
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 committe which the bureau was heading to look at the reform’s 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, 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 servant,’’ Bala said.
