Minister of Information, Labaran Maku
Muhammad Bello
The Federal Government Wednesday said from next year, promotions in five Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) would no longer be based on examination but on performance.
The pilot ministries the Federal Civil Service Commission is proposing to begin this new policy are, Ministries of Agriculture, Education, Finance, Health and Works.
Briefing journalists after the Federal Executive Council meeting, the Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, said the council approved the proposal of the Federal Civil Service Commission which is in line with the performance contract system introduced by the government recently.
President Goodluck Jonathan had in August signed a Performance Contract with members of his cabinet in line with government’s decision to produce a bi-annual evaluation report on the performance of ministers.
Maku said the commission made a formal presentation of the report to the council following the outcome of its annual conference held in June comprising both the federal and state service commissions, to discuss development and public service.
“One key issue that was reported today was that the Federal Civil Service Commission in partnership with state civil service commission have formally adopted a proposal to use the performance contract system introduced by the Federal Government as the basis for career promotion in the federal civil service.
“This indeed was presented to us and the commission is proposing that by 2013 five MDAs, namely: ministries of education, agriculture, health, finance and works will be adopted as pilot MDAs to introduce the new system of promotion based on performance.
“Previously, promotion in the civil service has always been through the regular civil service examination that are written by civil servants. In view of the new introduction of the performance contract systems into the MDAs, the federal civil service commission is now considering the possibility of using performance measure which is the essence of this contract system as a basis for promotion.”
He also said government will dump analogue operations and embrace automation of all its activities as from January 2013.