The names of 59 directors have been sent to Acting President Yemi Osinbajo from which he will appoint 20 as permanent secretaries, Daily Trust has learnt. Those to be appointed will replace 20 permanent secretaries whose service career has come to an end. Each permanent secretary represents a state.
Over 300 directors from 19 states and the FCT had vied for the positions but majority of them were eliminated through series of examinations and tests conducted recently. The 59 directors whose names were forwarded to the acting president were those who appeared before a Technical Committee for the last stage of the exercise.
Sources said the committee was expected to make the final selection and forward the names of the 20 successful candidates to the There are no more than three names from each of the affected states on the list. They are graded based on their scores, our sources said and that it is left for the acting president to use his own criteria to make the final select.
One of our sources said: “None of the 20 states has more than three names in the final list and they were arranged in order of performance in the three different stages of the screening; the best performing director is first on the list, followed by the second and the third. There are some states with just one or two names,” one of the sources, said.
“It is expected that one name would be picked from each of the states, no states would have more than one and nobody from a different state would become a permanent secretary to represent a different state,” he said. However, latest report said there is increased pressure from some “vested interests” at the Presidency and the National Assembly for the whole process to be cancelled. It was learnt that the “vested interests” were not happy that their “preferred candidates” did not sail through the selection process.
A different source said Osinbajo is being pressured by “some powers from within and without to cancel everything, simply because they were not allowed to pave the way for their candidates to make the final list. “Any director that missed this opportunity may not likely become a permanent secretary in his life time; that’s why some god-fathers are now whipping up sentiments; discrediting the whole process in the eye of the acting president even before the list was taken to him.
“The pressure is much, and unless President Buhari asks him to release the names, the acting president might not act on what was taken to him until Buhari returns from his medical vacation to announce the names,” he said The 16-member Technical Committee, which conducted the last selection,was headed by the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mrs. Winifred Oyo-Ita. The committee also had three of her predecessors as well as some serving and retired permanent secretaries and two representatives of the private sector as members.
Seventy eight federal directors from ministries, department and agencies of the federal government (MDAs) passed the first written examination held about two weeks ago, during which 222 were dropped. Fifty-nine out of 78 passed the second level of the screening tagged ‘Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Assessment Test,’ held at the Digital Bridge Institute (DBI), in Utako, Abuja. It was the fifty nine directors that appeared for the third and final level of ‘Oral Interview/Interactive Session,’ and were graded based on performance and the list submitted to Osinbajo.
Daily Trust reports that crisis over the screening heightened when the Senate mandated its committee on Establishment and Public Service to probe the exercise, after a point of order was raised by Senator Philip Aduda (PDP, FCT), on the alleged exclusion of three directors who sat for the examination from his constituency. It was learnt that none of FCT directors that sat for the examination made the list. Citing an exclusive report in Daily Trust on the examination, Aduda said the three directors sat for the examination alongside their colleagues but that their names were omitted.
Two officials who spoke on the development said the FCT officials were not omitted but failed to meet the criteria or score above average after their first phase of the exams on “Relevant Public Service and Policy Issues” held at the National Defence College (NDC) Auditorium, Abuja. Another official said the process was opened and transparent, such that applicants already knew their performance and scores, especially after the second phase CBT test.
“Unlike other states represented in the final shortlist, the FCT issue may be reviewed by lowering the standard for deputy directors to apply since those (FCT directors) disqualified during the exercise cannot re-apply for now,” he said. The change in policy for the federal permanent Secretaries to write examinations was said to be part of the resolutions of the National Council on Establishment (NEC) held July 2016 in Minna, Niger State.
President Buhari in 2015 said permanent secretaries would be appointed based on seniority and competence, a departure from an earlier policy introduced by late President Umaru Yar’adua. It was gathered that after the Minna meeting, the office of the HOS wrote to Buhari, seeking his consent to re-start the exams but there was no response up till the time he embarked on hismedical trip.
Another letter was sent to Osinbajo who was said to have given the go ahead for the exams to be conducted. The states whose permanent secretaries are retiring are Abia, Akwa-Ibom, Anambra, Bayelsa, Cross-River, Delta, Edo, Ekiti, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Lagos, Nasarawa, Ogun, Ondo, Oyo, Plateau, Rivers, Sokoto and the FCT.
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