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Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC), Prof. Tunji Olaopa, has urged the state civil service commissions to take their cue from his organisation’s strategic plan for optimal performance.
Olaopa made the call yesterday during the 44th Annual National Council of the Civil Service Commissions of the Federation holding in Umuahia, Abia State.
The strategic plan, which is the first of its kind in the 71 years of the existence of the FCSC is a five-year plan (2026-2030) to reform Nigeria’s civil service by enhancing merit-based recruitment, implementing performance-driven promotions, and using digital transformation. Its six pillars include strengthening institutional independence, introducing competitive digital recruitment, linking promotions to performance, automating HR, embedding ethical governance and ensuring inclusivity and equity. The plan aims to professionalize the civil service, improve efficiency and position it to support a $1 trillion economy.
According to Olaopa, the fundamental essence of the strategic plan is not only to restore the glory of the FCSC, in significant alignment with other national development frameworks, like the Vision 2050, the National Development Plan, and especially the Renewed Hope Agenda, but also to institutionalise the vision for a capable, citizen-centred and accountable civil service, and a mission to promote a merit-based, fair and ethical workforce system founded on the core values of integrity, professionalism, innovation and accountability (I-PIA).
He highlighted the key priority issues that ground the strategic significance of the FCSC strategic plan and which were invaluable for the critical deliberations of the 2025 council’s meeting.
To him, the constitutional mandate that the FCSC and other state civil service commissions have is recruitment, appointment, promotion and discipline of officers in the civil service, at the federal and state levels. This constitutional mandate, to him, makes the FCSC and the state civil service commissions the gatekeepers of the civil service and its merit-based performance, efficiency and productivity.
Olaopa noted that the reason the FCSC was reconstituted and why the NCSSC was revitalised was simply because so much had gone wrong with the civil service system.
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“The current dysfunction, therefore, demands that the mandate of the CSC needs to be recovered. First, there is the urgency of recovering the legal and operational independence of the CSC through a proper and more detailed conceptualisation of the issues of public-spiritedness, professionalism, merit and competency-based human resource management system, as well as their operational implications for serving as the theoretical launchpad for enabling equity, fairness, inclusivity and diversity management, like the federal character principle, as mandated by the Nigerian Constitution,” he said.
He urged the council, therefore, to interrogate the place of public service ethical frameworks and the establishment of internal audit systems as significant steps towards restoring the credibility of the FCSC as a veritable promoter of meritocracy.
He said that attention to merit and fairness underscored the need to take the Disability Act seriously in terms of what goes into the recruitment of those who are physically challenged.
“The same interrogation brings to light how ethics and the principle of accountability play a crucial role in the constitutional responsibility of disciplining errant civil and public servants. Diversity management is particularly troubling. The proper interpretation of the federal character principle, as one critical means for managing diversity, calls for careful reflection and rethinking of our understanding of inclusion and equity,” he added.
In his guest lecture, Prof. Tijjani Bande urged public servants to serve the real public and not parochial interests . He said that civil servants must have integrity to deliver their mandate. He urged civil servants to deal with the challenge of cynicism that everything is bad in Nigeria. According to him, civil servants are central in fighting the challenges of poverty, energy and security in the country. He noted that civil servants must be politically neutral to properly advise the government. He spoke about equipping civil servants that would make them know what is expected from them. According to him, training is not a waste of money. He urged a reinterpretation of merit and competence as leadership, courage and prudence also need to be considered in the assessment of the qualifications of civil servants. He tasked civil servants on fidelity to rules guiding the civil service. He urged them to live by example. He also tasked them on getting knowledge as they should update their skills through conferences and training and embrace partnership and understanding of industrial relations .
On his part, Amb Mustapha Suleiman, in his keynote address, stressed the necessity of collaboration and synergy between civil service commissions and heads of service for effective civil service.
