Nigeria’s vice president, Yemi Osinbanjo (SAN), has spoken on the need to take bold, big decisions to make a difference in the nation’s civil service.

The plan was presented to him by the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Dr Folashade Yemi-Esan.

Dr Folashade briefed the vice president and other senior government officials on the reform process of the Federal Civil Service which has been on since 2017.

It is gathered that the reform is being led by Steering and Implementation Committees with membership drawn from the public and private sectors with the engagement of development partners.

Speaking after listening to Dr Yemi-Esan’s presentation and other contributions, Osinbajo noted that “it is evident that perhaps, for the first time in a long time, some very serious attention is being paid to all of the various issues in our civil service.”

He added:

“I think that we should really do something that is bold, big and that will really make the difference in order to address some of the issues especially that of accommodation for civil servants.

“We can do much more with mass housing. We have a target now of 300,000 houses under our ESP social housing scheme. CBN has allocated N200 billion, but we have seen that we can provide mass housing, and we can make civil servants beneficiaries of the scheme.”

“Though the housing scheme is very modest, it is the sort of thing that we can at least do, to begin to take into account, the fact

that everybody who worked for the civil service deserves to live in their own home. There must be a strategy for giving everybody a place to live in.”

Osinbajo also noted that access to affordable homes is one of the easiest ways to get people out of poverty.

The vice president added that fixing the welfare of federal civil servants would be key to addressing challenges associated with productivity and corruption.

He added:

“A civil servant ought to be able to own a home, and justify to his family the reason why he went for the job”.

Earlier in her presentation, Dr Yemi-Esan identified staff welfare particularly, remuneration and housing as areas that require better focus and urgent intervention by the federal government.

She appealed for improved support, particularly in funding the implementation of successive strategy and implementation plans to overhaul the service for better productivity.

Dr Yemi-Esan further noted that the current reform in the Federal Civil Service has enabled the government to save huge sums through the verification of personnel payroll and digitization of some operations, among others.

It was learnt that the Head of Service would continue to lead the reform process as the 2021-2025 plan goes forward to the Federal Executive Council for approval.