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 need for such reforms to be replicated at the state level.

He said his visit to states of the federation was to encourage them to key into the directive of President Bola Tinubu for all state governments to create their bureau of public service reforms.

He stated that Tinubu had been particular about such reforms as it remained key to better service delivery in governance, and to help bridge the gap between what the government was doing and the people.

He said his agency was currently partnering critical stakeholders to introduce and promote 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 everybody that works under the federal government are between 2.7 and 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 him, such reforms at the state level have become so important so as to have uniformity in terms of the transformation that the federal government wants to drive, especially the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Tinubu.

Arabi also 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 digitalise governance, adding that digitalising the system would help reduce cost of governance, ensure transparency for the 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, key into the reforms, especially around the digitalisation of process,” 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.

He said some of the awards that the state government had recorded in the country could be attributed to the reforms in public service.