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From Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja
Nigeria’s Federal Civil Service has achieved a landmark victory in public sector reform, completing a full transition to paperless operations across all 38 ministries, departments, and agencies as of the close of business on Tuesday, December 30, 2025.
Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mrs Didi Esther Walson-Jack, made the disclosure while addressing a press conference in Abuja on Wednesday, confirming compliance with presidential and administrative directives. She added that the era of missing, lost or misplaced files is gone, leading to more efficient service delivery to citizens.
“Today, Nigeria marks a decisive milestone in governance… This milestone, therefore, marks a bold transition from a paper-based legacy bureaucracy to a modern, accountable, and digitally enabled public service. Simply put, all ministries in the Federal Civil Service are now paperless!” she stated.
The rollout covers 33 ministries and five key extra-ministerial bodies, including the State House, Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Federal Civil Service Commission, and Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation. Walson-Jack highlighted dramatic growth under her leadership since August 2024: from just three entities with partial paperless systems to all 38 now fully digital. Official government email accounts on the GovMail platform surged from fewer than 20,000 in August 2024 to over 100,000 today. “Now, all Civil Servants have official government email addresses, ensuring they operate with official email identities for secure, professional, and auditable government communication at scale. This strengthens sovereignty over official correspondence… and reduces reliance on unofficial communication channels,” she added. GovMail is projected to save billions of naira yearly by cutting external email subscriptions.
According to her, this caps 2025 as the “Year of Accomplishment” under the Federal Civil Service Strategy and Implementation Plan 2021–2025 (FCSSIP25), with its “Final Sprint – Delivering Results” push.
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Walson-Jack traced the effort back to 2017 under Mrs Winifred Oyo-Ita, who launched FCSSIP 2017–2020 and introduced the Enterprise Content Management System (ECM), later expanded by Dr Folasade Yemi-Esan into broader digital content services.
She explained that, post-milestone, the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (OHCSF) will extend ECM to all departments and agencies, with compliance monitoring, cybersecurity upgrades, and training.
Walson-Jack announced that in January 2026, a UNDP-backed Training-of-Trainers programme targets 500 trainers to skill up officers on tools like Service-Wise GPT, GovMail, and the Online Compendium of Federal Circulars. “All correspondence to the MEMDs should now be sent to the official registry email addresses, which can be found on the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation website,” she directed, banning paper submissions at physical registries. She added that citizens can track files via the Federal Civil Service Paperless portal using scanned emails.
Walson-Jack thanked President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for his “leadership, dedication and commitment,” alongside Secretary to the Government of the Federation George Akume. She praised ministers, especially Digitalisation Champions Minister of Budget and Economic Planning Atiku Bagudu and Minister of Solid Minerals Development Dele Alake, plus permanent secretaries, ICT teams, and partners like NITDA and Galaxy Backbone Limited. “GBB’s support was essential to reaching this milestone… guaranteeing delivery by the December 31, 2025, deadline,” she said. Walson-Jack also commended the media: “You have served as a vital bridge between the Service and citizens.”
