By Stella Kabruk
Kaduna – Gov. Nasiru El-Rufai of Kaduna State on Wednesday reiterated his government’s commitment to reforming the civil service to enable it attain global standards.
El-Rufai expressed the commitment at the opening ceremony of Stream 2 of the National Capacity Building Conference on mainstreaming best practices in public service examinations held in Kaduna.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the conference was organised by the Kaduna State Civil Service Commission in collaboration with the Exams Ethics Marshals International.
The conference had the theme: Towards High Performance Workforce in MDAs, LGAs, Parastatals, and Institutions in a Season of Resource Scarcity.
The governor, represented by the Permanent Secretary, Bureau for Establishment, Ibrahim Samaila-Gere, said that the state needed a transparent, strong, vibrant public service to serve as machinery on ground.
He said mainstreaming best practices in terms of public service examination would facilitate engagement of the best and brightest for the transformation of the state in particular and the country at large.
“No nation develops beyond the capacity of its public service.
“The state government is willing to partner with any organisation that will help move the public service forward for effective delivery,’’ El-Rufai said.
Mr Ike Onyechere, the founding Chairman, Exams Ethics Marshals International, said the operationalisation of the concept of government as a business could only succeed with a high performance workforce.
Onyechere said that the public service workforce should be competent, motivated and inspired through mainstreaming of best practices in public service recruitment, confirmation and promotion examinations.
He said that the involvement of government in business was complex because in addition to directly supplying the needs of society, it also had responsibility for regulation of private sector businesses.
According to the chairman, the performance of government determines the performance of other sectors of society.
“Government is a very complex business that requires high performance public service to succeed.
“The level of performance of any public service system is directly related to the level of ethics, integrity and best practices in recruitment, confirmation and promotion processes.
Earlier, the Chairman, Kaduna State Civil Service Commission, Mallam Sule Allahbamulafia, said the conference was timely in this era of change for the state government which was having lots of reforms.
Allahbamulafia said the current administration wanted to make the service more viable as a tool for implementing government’s policies for the betterment of the citizenry through strict adherence to an ethical value system.
“The entrenchment of ethics, integrity, transparency and credibility in the process of appointment, confirmation and promotion will no doubt promote the core values of the present administration in the state.
“It will also boost its effort to promote the culture of transparency and accountability in all aspect of governance,’’ Allahbamulafia said. (NAN)