Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has reiterated the need for Nigeria to develop well-trained, knowledgeable, and well-motivated public servants for effective service delivery and excellent performance.
He noted that with the age of digital technology and economy, an unmotivated and unskilled workforce will undermine the country’s economy and development projections.
Osinbajo, SAN, stated this on Thursday evening when he received 49 graduands of the pioneer cohort of the Africa Initiative for Governance (AIG) & Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government (AIG-BSG) Public Leadership programme, sponsored by the Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
This was contained in a statement by Osinbajo’s spokesman, Laolu Akande, titled, ‘Integrity, honesty, transparency make economic sense, dishonesty undermines enterprise – Osinbajo’, on Friday.
According to the vice president, it is vital to provide cutting-edge training to public servants because “once public goods cannot be delivered effectively, development suffers, the commons are all at risk and the overall quality of life of the people is undermined.
On the essence of developing Nigeria’s human resources, especially in the public sector, Osinbajo stated that while the government formulate several policies, they always fall short at the implementation level.
“our governments have never been short of ideas, policies or roadmaps. Indeed, we have some of the best written and most insightful policies on practically all issues…but we sometimes fall flat on implementation. The reason is the quality of the human resources that we deploy in the public sector.
“Unlike in the private sector, where usually the profit motive makes it imperative to provide relevant and cutting-edge training to ensure that staff is well equipped to deliver on targets and KPIs, the public service usually has traditionally taken an approach, the result being a bureaucracy unable to develop, but more importantly deliver on government initiatives and programmes.”
The vice president, however, spoke on the need to build values of integrity, honesty and transparency in public service.
“Recognizing that ensuring integrity in the workplace is not merely a moral issue, it is an existential issue for the country itself. Why do systems anywhere in the world uphold basic notions of honesty, transparency and integrity? It is because it makes economic sense; dishonesty undermines the entire enterprise,” he stated.
“We must also understand and disseminate our rules on governance in such a way as to make it clear that petty or grand corruption kills progress and will destroy the nation’s best,” he added.
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