Legal practitioners urge FG to scrap SERVICOM

A network of public interest lawyers has called for the scrapping of Service Compact with all Nigerians (SERVICOM), Mr Pelumi Olajengbesi, speaking on behalf of the network, urged asked the federal government to stop the tax payers money from being used to fund a moribund organization like SERVICOM which he claimed, was no longer servings any useful purpose.

Olajengbesi said this while addressing a news conference on Friday in Abuja.

He recalled how in 2004, Nigerians heaved a sigh of relief with the emergence of “Service Compact With All Nigerians” popularly known as SERVICOM.

He noted that the agency was established to promote effective, quality and efficient service to the people of Nigeria.

“Servicom empowered public officers to be at alert to their responsibilities in providing improved, efficient, timely and transparent service across governmental ministries, departments, agencies and parastatals”.

Olajengbesi claimed that the body was supposed to be a mechanism through which Nigerians can lodge complaints against tyrannical and errant public officers whose conducts falls below the standard required of a public and civil servants.

“It has offices in all federal government agencies, taking complaints and ensuring efficiency, justice and fairness in all government agencies but all that have changed.

“The body has now failed to uphold the purpose of its establishment, it no longer address complaints and has now become very ineffective.

“The organization’s leadership and modus oparandi have accordingly encouraged abuses of official duties on the one hand as well as precluding victims of these errant officers from accessing appropriate remedy within the administrative system”.

He, therefore, canvassed that the federal government should either inject a new lease of life into the agency or scrap it with immediate effect so as to stop wasting scarce resources on unproductive ventures.

“While the organization had gone down the drain, its workers have continued to draw salaries from the government covers without doing anything to justify the pay.

”Go to all agencies of the government you will hardly see their traces in anywhere whereas the workers are still drawing pays from the federation account”, he said.