Oronsaye Report On Civil Service Reform Outdated — HCSF

*Says 559 MDAs Have Been Captured On IPPIS
*Says FG Committed To Salary Harmonisation

Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan, Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HCSF), has said the implementation of Steve Oronsaye committee report on the restructuring and rationalisation of Feder­al Government parastatals, commissions and agencies is now obsolete.

Yemi-Esan, who stated this on Thursday at a media briefing to commemorate 2021 Nigeria Civil Service Week in Abuja, said many agencies have even been created after Oronsaye report.

She explained that Oron­saye committee was a Presi­dential Committee domiciled in the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Fed­eration.

It would be recalled that in 2011, the then President Goodluck Jonathan set up the Presidential Commit­tee on Restructuring and Rationalisation of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies, under the Chairmanship of Mr. Steve Oronsaye.

Members of the commit­tee included Japh CT Nwosu; Rabiu D. Abubakar; Salman Mann; Hamza A. Tahir; Adetunji Adesunkanmi, and Umar Mohammed (member/ secretary).

The 800-page report, sub­mitted during former Pres­ident Goodluck Jonathan’s tenure, was hailed for its courage in recommending the abolishment and merger of 102 government agencies and parastatals. The report noted that there were 541 statutory and non-statuto­ry government parastatals, agencies, and commissions with roles that overlap or are duplicates of several others. Based on the Oronsaye com­mittee’s recommendations, some should be scrapped, while others should be merged, so that a total of 161 may be maintained.

It had far-reaching recom­mendations on MDAs that should be scrapped, those to be merged and those to become self-funding, there­by freeing funds for the much-needed capital projects across the country.

Another key recommen­dation of the committee was to discontinue government funding of professional bod­ies and councils.

Answering questions from newsmen, Yemi-Esan said the report is now outdated, as it was written about 10 years ago.

“Let me make this clari­fication. Oronsaye report is the report of the committee headed by the head of service.

“It was not head of ser­vice committee. It was just that the committee was head­ed by head of service.

“But it was a Presidential Committee domiciled in the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) Of­fice.

“On assumption of office, the question of what to do with Oronsaye report came up.

“I have met with the SGF several times on the way forward with the Oronsaye report.

“Most of our conversations were on the fact that Oron­saye report is now outdated because the report took place about 8 or 10 years ago.

“Even the agencies and parastatals that were meant to be rationalised, we have even had more created, even after Oronsaye report.

“So what we have decided on recently is that the SGF will inaugurate two commit­tees.

“One committee to look at Oronsaye report and another committee to look at what has happened after the Oronsaye report so that we can harmo­nise the work of these two committees and give recom­mendations.

“So, these are the issues around that report.”

Yemi-Esan, who seized the opportunity to reel out some of her achievements since assumption of office in 2019, said in view of the rap­id changes occurring globally, her office had decided to refo­cus and transform the civil service to a modern and tech­nologically driven institution that can seamlessly deliver services to citizens.

According to her, “Our flagship Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Solu­tion is a key reform initiative which among other objec­tives aims to digitise records in the Federal Civil Service; automate workflow to ensure a departure from manual processes; and facilitate ease in the storage and retrieval of records.

“It is designed to improve information sharing and synergy across Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), facilitate improved service delivery and reduce cost of governance.”

Commenting on the imple­mentation of the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Infor­mation System (IPPIS), the Head of the Civil Service said as of January 31, 2021, a total number of 559 MDAs with 390,676 employees have been captured on the IPPIS platform.

This figure, she said, ex­cludes the army, paramili­tary, police and universities.

She further said several activities have been initi­ated and carried out by the office towards driving, imple­menting and deploying of the human resource module of IPPIS.

“The HR component of IPPIS is critical because it is the basis on which the other modules, especially the pay­roll module revolve.

“All staff in the core min­istries have been verified and enrolled unto the IPPIS platform, which implies that the core staff can utilise the self-service components to generate pay slips and apply for leave, among others.

“With full deployment of the HR module of IPPIS, human error would be min­imised through streamlined data, cost reduced based on available accurate data, financial and manpower resources efficiently and ef­fectively utilised and planned for; while storage of data collected on employees of the Federal Public Service is secure and only accessible to authorised officers’, she said.

In an effort to eliminate irregularities and fraud per­petrated on the IPPIS, as well as to purge the system of all forms of infiltrations into the service, she announced that her office had inaugurated a Committee on the Enrolment of New Employees unto the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information Sys­tem (IPPIS) platform on 1st March, 2021.

On staff welfare, Yemi-Es­an said the salaries of the civ­il servants would be reviewed and harmonised in tandem with the current economic realities, adding that a com­mittee had been set up to car­ry out the assignment.

He further disclosed that the Federal Government through her office had pro­vided Group Life Assurance cover for Federal Govern­ment employees in 48 MDAs for the year 2021/2022 through FEC approval of a total sum of N9, 248,995,907.31 as premi­um to be handled by 15 under­writers.

This, she said, was part of government’s commitment in catering for the welfare of its workers.

“The Group Life Assur­ance scheme covers all Fed­eral Government employees who draw salary from the federal treasury including the paramilitary such as Im­migration, Civil Defence, Fire Service, Correctional Service, Road Safety, NDLEA etc.

“In the event of the unfor­tunate demise of an employ­ee, next of kin are entitled to three times the emolument of the deceased.

‘Arrangements are on-go­ing to ensure the immedi­ate commencement of the 2021/2022 policy,” she said.