Consistent with its vision to be a catalyst for public sector transformation across Africa, the Africa Initiative for Governance (AIG) recently elevated private-public partnership by signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (OHCSF) aimed at transforming the country’s Civil Service.
The MoU will see AIG providing and deploying requisite skills, know-how and funding towards agreed programmes and projects in the 2017-2019 Strategy of the OHCSF while, on its part as government, the OHCSF will provide requisite and timely governmental assistance, dedicated personnel to the agreed projects and programmes.
The AIG will also provide critical support to OHCSF in the advancement of the implementation of its Strategy Plan through the provision and deployment of essential high-calibre skill and know-how towards the project, as well as funding.
The OHCSF is administrative machinery for implementing government policies and programmes had developed a 2017-2019 Strategic Plan aimed at improving the current state of the Service across a number of critical areas including culture and capacity building, technology, entrepreneurship, and welfare administration. The strategy was formally unveiled by the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo in February this year.
Winifred Oyo-Ita, head of the Civil Service of the Federation, explained in a statement obtained by BusinessDay, “the OHCSF 2017-2019 Strategic Plan aims to create an efficient, productive, incorruptible and citizen-centred (EPIC) civil service, and, thereby, immensely improve the performance of the service.”
The MoU also aims to catalyse reforms in the Federal Civil Service and, according to Oyo-Ita, the signing of the MoU is a momentous milestone in the decades of the existence of the Federal Civil Service.
“There has never been a partnership of this kind from within the shores of Nigeria to render both technical and financial support of this quantum towards the implementation of the Strategy of the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation. It is indeed a new vista and change has begun in the Nigerian Federal Civil Service,” she noted.
Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, Founder and Chairman of AIG, revealed that AIG was out to catalyse public sector transformation across Africa, connecting proven private sector innovation, leadership and funding to an amenable public sector in partnerships that seek to attract, inspire and support future leaders of Africa’s public sector.
“We greatly commend the efforts of the Presidency and the OHCSF towards impactful public sector reforms and are enthused by our shared conviction that such reforms are vital to the sustained growth and development of any economy or nation”, he said, adding that AIG was pleased to pioneer and harness private sector support to the government in this area.
As a body, AIG is not new to public sector relationship and partnerships. In June 2016, it signed a five-year partnership with the Blavatnik School of Government (BSG) at the University of Oxford. Under this partnership, AIG will, starting 2017, make available five Scholarships yearly to outstanding Nigerians and Ghanaians to pursue the Master of Public Policy degree at BSG, University of Oxford. Upon graduation, AIG Scholars will be expected to return to their home country and apply their learning experience as change agents in their country’s public sector.
It will also, every year, award the AIG Fellowship, to be undertaken at BSG University of Oxford, to one outstanding senior public service official in Nigeria or Ghana. In October 2016, AIG announced Professor Attahiru Jega, former Executive Chairman of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as the first AIG Fellow of Practice.
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