Why I’ll reform civil service

The Accord Party’s presidential candidate, Prof. Christopher Imumolen, on Friday, advanced reasons why he would embark on wholesale reforms in the country’s civil service if elected Nigeria’s president next year.

Imumolen, in a statement by his media team on Friday, said reforming the civil service will help achieve any president deliver on his or her mandate optimally.

According to him, reforming and sanitising the civil service to make it more attuned to the demands of an incoming reformist government will be to the benefit of the people.

He added that the success or failure of any government depends on the civil service and as such his topmost priority when elected will be to reform the civil service.

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“Any government that wishes to fully deliver on its pre-election promises must not overlook the role the service could play in ensuring that because they are the oil that lubricates the engines of government,” he says.

“The civil service as presently constituted can not fully fulfill its constitutional role of making government work effectively because of age-long habits that need to be curbed.

“A civil service populated by workers who got there on a man-know-man basis. A civil service where indolence and official corruption is the order of the day cannot make any government succeed.

“That is why, if I get the people’s mandate to become president, I’ll do all in my power to ensure that that status quo doesn’t remain.

“We are going to review the process of recruitment into the service. We are going end the era of file-carrying and institute a proper system to ensure transparency and accountability in the running of government business.

“We are going to fully digitalise the whole civil service structure to make it more effective and result-oriented.

“Staff would be made to undergo computer training and retraining to bring them to the level we want them to be in the new regime of prompt and efficient service delivery.

“In my time as president, it will no longer be business as usual as only those who are patriotic and progressive-minded, and who have the overall interest of the country at heart will be allowed the opportunity to work in the civil service,” the statement quoted him as saying.