12 Vacant Perm Sec Offices Cripple Borno Civil Service As HoS Retires In Few Weeks

Borno state Head of Service, Barrister Simon Malgwi,  will be retiring from the state civil service before the end of October 22, having clocked the prescribed retirement age. afflict

The governor of Borno state, Babagana Zulum,  made this known on Wednesday when he swore in a newly reconstituted 5-man Civil Service Commission led by Bulama Mali Gubio, a former head of Borno civil service.

Barrister Malgwi who coordinated the swearing of the reconstituted Commission was commended by the Governor who described him as a dedicated administrator that will be missed as he exits the services of the state government on Oct. 22.

Governor Zulum urged him to use his remaining time in service to organise training of civil servants and ensure promotion exams are conducted to fill in key vacant offices in the civil service. Even though many see that directive as a not-easily-achieved task for the outgoing top civil servant, the principled head of service agreed to do his best as he counts his remaining days in service.

Malgwi has been in the Borno state service for about 34 years.

Humanitarian Times gathered that the exit of Barrister Malgwi would leave the government in search of 13 more principal officers – 12 perm secs and a head of the service – to fill up the vacancies created in the civil service that has over the years been battling with dearth of highly qualified administrators.

A source said, “at the moment, we have 12 vacancies for permanent secretaries which the government has to appoint alongside the exiting head of service, and more perm Secs would be retiring in few months coming.”

Borno state government has in recent times recorded massive retirement of civil servants of both junior and top echelon of the workforce.

The mass retirement episodes have not been marched with periodic recruitment of civil servants due to the embargo on recruitment slammed on the state since 1999, which was recently reviewed.

Governor  Zulum has a  herculean task of appointing the 13 top civil servants for the state without giving in to any form of sentiments whatsoever. It is hoped he maintains the spirit deployed in the selection of the reconstituted Borno Civil Service Commission where track records and dedication to duty were used as a yardstick for selection.

The government had few months ago organised the training of various cadre of top civil servant on modern approach to running government offices as a radical response to the weakened values of the state civil service.

The Governor had during the inauguration of CSC noted that the major policy thrust of his administration “is the full recovery and reconstruction which depend on the institutional capability of the public service and professional competency of the work force, hence the training and retraining of the workforce.” Zulum said.

He added that civil service is the pillar upon which all developmental efforts of government depend, hence government will not allow the system to suffer.

It was even more disturbing when Professor Zulum had to lament that despite controversial series of biometric data capturing of the state workforce, which led to many civil servants being wrongly knocked out of payroll, the state still does not have a nominal roll of its workforce.

“It is very sad that we still do not have the nominal roll of our workforce in Borno state; we don’t have a sustainable data showing us the numbers of workers that are in Borno state. This is not good,” he lamented .

“There is the need to reposition the civil service and I have further directed the compilation of a comprehensive nominal roll of the civil servants in the state and also ordered for compilation of vacancies in all Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs preparatory to conduct of promotion examinations for eligible personnel to be held before the end of this year”.