The Bureau of Public Service Reforms has reiterated the commitment of the federal government towards addressing the emerging challenges of Treasury Single Account, Pension Reforms and other reforms towards repositioning the public service.
Mr. Ibrahim-Dasuki Arabi, Director-General of the bureau disclosed this while presenting paper titled Dissecting Public Service Reforms at a symposium organized by the Faculty of Administration, Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria on Tuesday.
The Symposium has as its theme “Dissecting the Nigeria Public Service Institution: Leadership, Governance and Service Delivery (Past, Present and Future).
Arabi said the President has inaugurated a committee which the bureau is heading to look at the reforms initiatives around pension to offer solution to emerging challenges of pension reforms.
The 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 added that the government monetization programme was celebrated initially as many civil servants became landlords in Abuja and other places, but now some negative impacts of the policy were manifesting.
The scribe said government was poised to come up with a redesigned housing programme to make acquisition of houses by public and civil servant easy.
He noted another reform by bureau was the Treasury Single Account (TSA) which has many branches and the programme was flexible software that can be manipulated to add what you want to address. “By the time we seat on the table, we will address some of the challenges universities, teaching hospitals and some federal public institutions,’’ he said.
Arabi said the bureau has transformed financial management in Nigeria from analogue to digital to reduce corruption. According to him IPPIS and Public Financial Management Reforms were some of the innovations of the bureau which has transformed Nigeria’s public service.
He said the bureau would open a line of discussion with key institutions such as the ABU to bridge the gaps between theories and practice to improve the policies developed by the bureau which government was implementing.
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.
