The National Council of Civil Service Commissions of the Federation, says, it’s 2025 conference aligns with ongoing national reforms including the Renewed Hope Agenda, the Federal Civil Service Strategy Implementation Plan and the nation’s aspiration to build a $1 trillion economy by 2030.
In a communique the Council issued at the end of its 5-day 44th Annual National Council conference held in Umuahia with the theme “Repositioning Civil Service Commissions in Nigeria as a Hope of Professionalism in Public Service Human Resource Management”, the Council reviewed a change in management framework “designed to bridge the gap between strategy and impact, focusing on leadership alignment, stakeholder engagement, and capability development”.
The Commission’s deliberations also, included transforming CACs into hubs of human resource professionalism “through enhanced human resource processes, technology adoption, performance management, and ethical governance, ensuring alignment with national development objectives such as the Renewed Hope Agenda”.
The reviewed memoranda from state commissions collectively advocated for comprehensive civil service reforms through technology application and institutionalized meritocracy, specifically the implementation of a unified human resource management information system, HRMIS, for transparency and data-driven decisions as “Policy guidelines to entrench merit-based practices and curb political interference in personnel matters”.
Others resolutions include “the creation of a national graduate database to streamline recruitment and credential verification and a government-wide digital transformation platform to integrate ministries and automate workflows for improved service delivery”.
The Council noted, the need to take appropriate initiatives aligned with the constitutionally enshrined independence of the civil service commissions, the need to handle political interference and nepotism within the law and regulations through the establishment of comprehensive, and strict rules guiding personnel management processes as well advocacy to educate the populace, including the politicians.
They harped on the need to address staff retention in the face of the JAPA syndrome, improve remunerations, and provide conducive work environment also featured in their resolutions, including the need to prioritize and standardize training for all cadres to engender merit-based promotion and career development of civil servants in the face of paucity of training funds and the need for the state governments to give the state civil service commissions free hand to exercise their constitutional duties.
Similarly, the need for more interaction between the federal civil service commissions and state civil service commissions towards ensuring improved service delivery, the need to adopt a paperless mode through aggressive digitalization with deadline for implementation, and the need and concern about the trend of falsification of date of birth by civil servants in order to elongate their stay in service was decided upon.
The Council also noted “the need for proactive and efficient service delivery through regular training and the capacity building, capacity and the capability development of civil servants and the consideration of staff welfare as an essential enabler”, as well as “the need to explore possible potentials for revenue generation through partnership, collaboration by the civil service commissions to effectively carry out their mandate”.
While resolving to encourage every state civil service commission to, within the next 12 months, develop or review their strategic plans, taking cue from the federal civil service commission, taking cue from the federal civil service commission strategic plan 2026 to 2030 and source robust resourcing of such endeavors from both government budget and development partners and NGOs, the Commission also urged each state civil service commission to establish a strategy implementation coordination unit, SICU, to oversee the execution, monitoring, and reporting of its strategic plan.
The Council further urged every civil service commission “to maintain a zero-tolerance policy for any public servant found guilty of falsifying age, credentials, or other vital records, to ensure and to restore merit as a principal consideration in their recruitment and promotion processes and institute a clear and objective formula to accommodate the requirement for inclusivity and diversity management.
“Encourage civil service commissions in their gatekeeping role and merit application wherein take into account the suitability of recruitment candidates for civil service career which requirement to public service anchored on patriotism rather than material or power benefits, to adopt and implement a human resource management information system, HRMIS, as soon as possible and to encourage civil service commissions to take advantage of the existing national policy for Nigeria Education Repository and Data Bank which will enable seamless verification of educational qualifications of recruited staff.
“Encourage all civil service commissions to transition to paperless operations as soon as possible, including the digitization of personnel records, introduction of e-approval systems, and development of employee self-service portals, to encourage all civil service commissions to as a principal human resource management institutions of the service to update and empower themselves through system engineering, technology application, knowledge acquisition, and staff skilling, stroke reskilling.
“To implement the performance management system, PMS, in their organization in place of APAR system, advise various jurisdictions to apply relevant rules or record falsification, including change of date of birth, encourage all the state civil service commissions to share their innovations, and the Federal Civil Service Commission will collect them centrally for experience sharing across the 36 states and the FCT.
“To encourage civil service commissions to strengthen their oversight functions over MDS in the implementation of delegated human resource responsibilities with periodic compliance audits and feedback mechanisms, realizing that human resource management of the civil service is shared responsibility, encourage civil service commission to be disposed to and practice consultation and collaboration with relevant establishment, especially office of head of civil service, considering the effect of the regime of embargo on employment and application of waiver for recruitment and staffing of service and succession management, and to advise civil service commissions to take measures to check face out the practice through restoration and strengthening of an effective manpower planning and control system, thus ensuring a regular system of qualified staff to rejuvenate the service”, the Council resolved.
On fake certificates, the Council encouraged the federal civil service commission to collaborate with the Ministry of Education to ascertain the position of their policy on fake certificates and update the commissions accordingly, urged the federal civil service commission to sensitize states to make budgetary provisions to enable the state civil service commission to actualize the adoption and implementation of the strategy and to explore the possibility of holding one or two meetings by the chairman, federal civil service commission, and the chairman of the state and state FCT commissions in between annual national councils.
The Council encouraged federal civil service commission to convene a conference in the third quarter of the year for the purposes of capturing the outcome of the decisions in the next fiscal year’s budget, encourage the state civil service commission to join the forum of the Association African Public Service Commissions as an avenue of enlarging the architecture and appealed to the Federal Government to provide the enablement for the successful hosting of Association African Public Service Commissions general assembly and infrastructure for the organization’s secretariat.
The federal civil service commission was finally encouraged to take steps to bring other human resource management institutions in the public service, such as the police service commission, the national assembly service commission, federal judicial service commission, the civil defense correctional and immigration services board, into the fold of the council as members or associations or associates.
