Experts Call for New Collaboration for Transferring Competency from Private to Public Sector

Dike Onwuamaeze and Ugo Aligo

Experts have called for the refocusing of the country’s conception of Private Public Partnership (PPP) to include collaborations that would ensure transfer of capacity and productivity from the private sector to the public sector.

They noted that the new collaboration between the public and the private sectors would be built around the quest for talent, skills, performance management, automated human resources, digitisation of public sector processes and enhancement of staff welfare in order to motivate people to work.

The call was made yesterday by participants in a webinar on “Mainstreaming Private Sector Collaborationin Public Sector Reform,” which was organised by the by ICE (Innovation, Change, and Entrepreneurship) Hub, a subsidiary of the TL First Integrated Management Group and in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Economies of Africa (CSEA).

The experts described PPP as a partnership between an agency of the government and the private sector in the delivery of goods and services to the public.
They stated that the transfer of efficiency from the private sector to public sector should be the way forward in the PPP because improvement in the public sector, which is currently characterised by corruption, nepotism, influence peddling and weak capacity and low productivity, would grow the profitability of the private sector.

The Executive Vice Chair of the Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation, Mrs. Ofovwe Aig-Imoukwuede, said that the foundation believed strongly “that the private sector needs to bring its resources and capacity to bear to support the public sector because without a well-functioning public sector, there is a limit within which the private sector can grow.”

Aig-Imoukhuede said: “We are bringing people on board to develop a framework that will allow for the transfer of capacity from the private to the public sector.

“One of the things we are doing now is helping the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation (OHCSF) to develop frameworks that will allow for wider participation from the private sector. We are trying to transfer capabilities from the private sector to the public sector while encouraging public sector workers to work in the private sector on short term internship.

The Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), Mr. Simbi Wabote, said that he brought his 25 five years experience from Shell Petroleum with the hope of bringing it to bear with the operations of the NCDMB.

He observed that public sector is characterised by weak institutions, dearth of capacity and knowledge and called for investment in training that would enhance capacity building public sector.

“People are not trained in the public sector in areas that have meaning to the jobs they are doing. We have to do a competence gap analysis in the public sector and match them with the position personnel are holding in the MDAs,” he said, adding that he was surprised to find out that some workers do not have job specifications.

The Technical Assistant to the Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Gideon Adogbo, said that the PPP should be orientated toward bringing innovations into the public sector in a manner that would increase and protect public revenue, avoid and decrease cost of running government and ensure cheaper access to effective public services.

Adogbo said that said that innovation “is not ideas. It is turning ideas into money. Innovation is deeply commercial and is about making money and sometimes it is done shamelessly by copying.

“The first thing we are looking at in this reform is to instititionalise performance management in the public sector by ensuring that there is job objective set for everyone. We are also looking at consequence management to ensure that we can deliver. We have also begin to ensure that specific skills are required for each grade level in the civil service (to evolve) a performance management system with performance improvement plan.

“A lot of investments will go into this so, that those with high performance will be rewarded. It is going into the 2022 budget circle. I think that there is light at the end of the tunnel. It will be tough but that will happen.”