By Musa Adamu
Abuja
The European Union (EU) is committing 20 million Euros (N4.46 Billion) towards the Nigeria’s civil service reforms.
The bloc is committing the fund specifically for the coordination of the programme reform process, policy development and civil service administration reform in Nigeria.
The supervising minister of national planning, Ambassador Bashir Yuguda, made this known at the inauguration of the project steering committee for the EU Support to Federal Governance Reform Programme (SUFEGOR) in Nigeria.
The beneficiary agencies include office of Head of Service of the Federation (HOSF), the Bureau of Public Service Reform (BPSR), National Planning Commission (NPC), National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the Federal Inland Revenue service (FIRS).
Recognising the weakness of the public service, Nigeria commenced the implementation of the National Strategy for Public Service Reform (NSPSR) in 2008. However, government’s 2010 Performance Monitoring and Evaluation Report (PMER) notes that the marginal gains recorded by the reforms were not sufficient to carry the service to the next level, taking a cue from the first National Implementation Programme (NIP) of the NV 20-2020.
Accordingly, Yuguda listed other factors which make policy planning and forecasting less reliable and effective as weak technical competences of key specialised agencies responsible for statistical development and policy planning; namely the NBS and NPC
“The existing Medium-Term Sector Strategy (MTSS) is still weak, in spite of government’s efforts at improving the strategy in the past two years; also annual budgets are neither prepared on the basis of this strategy nor linked to government’s Medium Term Economic Framework (MTEF), and this makes it difficult to monitor policy and budget performance in line with its policy framework and priorities,” he said.
He said it was on the basis of the these challenges the EU under the 10th EDF Nigeria-EU Country Strategy Paper and National Indicative Programme (CSP/NIP) was providing Support to the Federal Governance Reform Programme (SUFEGOR) to support the implementation of the second phase of the NSPSR planned for 2012-2016.