Nigeria Says Workers’ Pay To Be Based on Performance From 2025

Folasade Yemi Esan

Nigeria’s federal government has said it plans to implement performance-related pay system in the federal civil service from 2025.

The Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan, disclosed this on Tuesday, while briefing journalists on activities of the 2023 Civil Service Week.

She also stated that Permanent Secretaries have been informed that promotion in the civil service would be based on workers’ performance, adding the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation also plans to professionalise human resource management in the federal service by 2024.

The HoS stated that the office has successfully attended to all training requests from MDAs, while progress report on the year 2022 approved training programmes indicated that over 16,000 officers were trained at core MDA level.

Yemi-Esan, also disclosed that the service detected 1,618 fake/illegal employment letters while it had continued to suspend several errant officers from IPPIS platform for not uploading their records.

She said following the initiatives in accelerating the roll-out of the HR Module of the IPPIS, 69,854 officers across the core MDAs in FCT and the six geo-political zones were verified and enrolled into the payroll.

The HoS also disclosed that 205,411 non-core civil servants affiliated to government agencies and parastatals have also been verified. The next stage, according to her, was to transfer those workers to the IPPIS. She said by the end of 2024 the process will be completed.

She also added that 3,657 officers were investigated by ICPC for not being present for verification audit while the verification exercise for 3,465 officers recruited from 2017-2019 and those absorbed into the mainstream had been completed.

She added that the educational certificates, birth certificate/ declaration of age record of workers are to be uploaded to ensure that only duly employed workers are uploaded into IPPIS.

Yemi- Esan stressed that under Structured Mandatory Assessment-based Training Programme (SMAT-P) and following the successful conduct of Training Needs Assessment (TNA) and development of Standard modules across the three levels of basic, intermediate and advanced, the office had trained 6,007 officers on Salary Grade Levels 07-17.

On digitilisation the head of service said open government across MDAs and minimum of 50 per cent of functional official email addresses was created in the Service by 2025 while minimum of 40 per cent automation of ministries’ work processes, minimum of 60 per cent access to government’s services online and provision of clean, reliable, affordable and sustainable power supply to guarantee the optimisation of the digitalisation policy is attained.

“By the grace of God, it is our pledge as a Service to remain focused and committed to formulating and driving the policies of government for sustainable development of our beloved country. Hence, the Office will continue to forge stronger alliances and continue to re-engineer the service to be able to attain this aspiration,” Yemi-Esan said.

She also expressed government sensitivity to the plight of workers who are finding it difficult to commute daily to work in the light of the high transport fares caused by the removal of fuel subsidy.

She said a committee is working at recommending minimum wage for workers, providing buses for workers as well as looking at a stop gap in on the amount of money they have to pay as transport for workers.

“It is a working committee that has not finished its work. It will look at amount of money to pay for six months. It is even looking at the conversion of vehicles for workers instead of buying PMS with their cars. I am sure in a week or two, the committee finish its work and we hope the workers will smile home,” she said.

Olawale Ajimotokan in Abuja