FG tasks states on public service reforms
The Director-General of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR), Mr. Dasuki Arabi, has advised state governments to emulate reforms by the Federal Government aimed at repositioning the public service.
Arabi gave the advice in Gombe on Tuesday, shortly after a meeting with top management of the Gombe State Bureau of Public Reforms Service.
He stated that the Nigerian public service was gradually being repositioned through digital transformation as a result of the intervention of his agency and that there was a need for such reforms to be replicated at the state level.
He said that his visit to the states of the federation was to encourage them to key into the directive of President Bola Tinubu for all state governments to create their own bureau of public service reforms.
He stated that Tinubu had been particular about such reforms as they remained key to better service delivery in governance and to helping bridge the gap between what the government was doing and the people.
He said his agency is currently partnering with critical stakeholders to introduce and promote the adoption of technology to deepen accountability and transparency in the operations and services of public institutions.
“Whatever we do at the federal level, if we are not able to get it cascaded down to the states, we will not succeed.
“Data has shown that at the federal level, everybody that works under the federal government is about 2.7 to 2.9 million.
“Now when you take this number of people out of the 220 million people, that means a greater percentage of us are in the state, and that is what makes this visit very important,” he said.
According to the DG, such reforms at the state level are important to have national uniformity in terms of the transformation that the federal government wants to drive, especially the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Tinubu.
Arabi said his engagement with stakeholders at the state level was to ensure that public servants understood the tools for such reforms and were able to use them effectively to improve the quality of public service.
He said part of the reforms was for states to digitalize governance, adding that digitalizing the system would help reduce the cost of governance and ensure transparency for citizens to track the activities of the government.
Arabi commended Gov. Inuwa Yahaya of Gombe State for creating the Bureau of Public Service Reforms, which he said had helped the state in terms of the achievements that it had recorded since 2019.
“We are seeing the results of some of the interventions, but we want the state to do more and key into the reforms, especially around the digitalization of processes,” he said.
On his part, Mr. Abubakar Hassan, the Director-General of Gombe State BPRS, said the state had made tremendous achievements since it initiated public service reforms led by Gov. Yahaya.
Hassan said that some of the awards that the state government had recorded in the country could be attributed to the reforms in public service.
He said that any call to strengthen such reforms in Gombe State was a welcomed development.
According to him, there was a need for the state to build on earlier reforms to have stronger service delivery to its citizens.
“Presently, the director has proposed so many things we ought to have been doing or have done at the state level.
“We assure him that definitely some of these things he has come with will be adopted, and we will try and see how to work them out for the benefit of our state,” he said.