BADAGRY – Mr Ajibade Peters, the Director-General, Administrative Staff College of Nigeria (ASCON), on Friday charged public servants in country to generate new ideas to promote development.
Peters gave the charge at the closing ceremony of the fourth in the series of the 2014 ASCON Regular Courses in Badagry.
The DG said that the civil service was the engine of growth and key to national development.
He urged the public service to continually generate new ideas and innovations to make itself relevant to both government and the citizenry.
“The Public service remains the most vital institution through which the government at all levels delivers its policies and programmes to the citizenry.
“Because of the importance of the service, the government has spared no effort in recent times to reposition the service for effective service delivery.
“In line with the huge investment of government to reposition the service, government also expects much from the public service and public servants in terms of improved efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery.
“So public servants must evolve a public service that delivers government policies and programmes with excellence, discipline and professionalism,” he said.
Peters, however, lamented lack of interest of Nigerians to invest their resources in the country. [eap_ad_1] “Nigerians don’t consider their country a safe or worthy haven to invest their resources and if we don’t do that, who else will?
“I often hear public servants castigating government over its neglect of the public service.
“This is unfortunate because how many of us ever ponder to ask ourselves how many public servants really invest their energies, time, knowledge, skills and creativity for the improvement of the service.
“Just as we need Nigerians to invest in the country, in order to attract foreign investors, we also need public servants to invest in the public service.
“This is to attract government attention and commitment to the well-being of the public servants,” he noted.
Peters urged the graduating participants to use the knowledge acquired from their various programmes to make their various working places better.
“One of the major challenges after attending a training programmes like this is for you to make deliberate efforts to transfer your learning to the job.
“You do that to enable you improve your performances at work after undergoing the course here,” he said.
One of the participants, Mr Yemi Akande applauded the efforts of ASCON and promised to attend further programmes at the college.
“The two weeks I have spent here have been awesome. It’s a wonderful place to be and everything is working perfectly.
“There is always power supply, the environment is very conducive, there is no doubt in my mind that I will be here again as soon as possible,” he added.
A total of 44 participants graduated from the various courses. (NAN)
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