Re: Housing scheme for civil servants

I read in page 3 of the Daily Trust newspaper of February 3rd, 2017 about the wonderful and commendable true efforts of the Federal Government through the good offices of the able, courageous, sensible, and disciplined Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mrs Winifred Oyo-Ita on the specially designed mass housing initiative for […]

I read in page 3 of the Daily Trust newspaper of February 3rd, 2017 about the wonderful and commendable true efforts of the Federal Government through the good offices of the able, courageous, sensible, and disciplined Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mrs Winifred Oyo-Ita on the specially designed mass housing initiative for Federal Civil Servants. The already allocated 1,350 housing units in the first phase of the program represented a quantum of remarkable achievement worth emulating by the second tier of government who always dream of resuscitating their now demoralised and comatose civil services, courtesy civil rule from 1999, with very few exceptions. Many administrations paid lip service to the important provision of housing accommodation for their civil servants and leave them to their own devices, sometimes corruption-infested methodologies to acquire a roof over their heads before retiring from service.

Housing estates established by the past enigmatic governments but despised in democracy, by wide mouthed buffoons in their usual decrepit vituperations, simply disappeared under the guise of either owner-occupier thievery or selling of public property at giveaway prices to private individuals by out rightly denying other qualified serving officers opportunities to occupy government quarters as enshrined in the public service rules during their service years. The political masters even had the temerity to sell quarters in the so called GRAs to their cronies who quickly demolish the existing structures and immediately deploy the awesome resources cornered from the same government which appointed them into political offices and build edifices one only notices in the Federal Capital.

There is no doubt that the provision of adequate housing to civil servants guarantees efficiency, honesty and effective service delivery. I therefore use this versatile medium to congratulate Mrs Winifred Oyo-Ita for her interest in the welfare of the Federal Civil Servants. This first ground-breaking phenomenon would go down in the annals of history of this great country, Nigeria.

The Federal Civil Servants must count themselves lucky to have the kind of Mrs Oyo-Ita as their diligent head at this material time. They must shun corruption in all its ramifications, exhibit continued unalloyed loyalty to the Government of the day through their boss who has given a shining example of good leadership. The lioness from the South South deserves recognition and PMB’s commendation because her resourcefulness has begun to bear fruits, only good trees bear good fruits.  We have seen the evil trees in the pension scam farms bearing their type of fruits no one wishes to touch. Many of Mrs Oyo-Ita’s predecessors have since been forgotten in the landscape except probably some who allegedly tarnished their image with their light fingers.

The present administration is enjoined to encourage this hard-working lady of repute to turn around the fortunes of the once robust Federal Civil Service probably some state governments may copy if they still have a little sympathy for their ageing and over bloated bureaucracies. I appeal to the Chief of Staff to the President to organise in line with the above postulation, even an impromptu one day seminar where Mrs Winifred Oyo-Ita, Head of Civil Service of the Federation, will speak to the royalties or their lordships whenever they come round cap in hand for increase in VAT, Excess Crude Account or another round of bailouts which ostensibly and in many alleged circumstances, benefit their cronies or diverted by their girlfriends in the United States as reported in the media recently. It may be apparent that, had their been transparency and goodwill, no state in the Federation today would have any backlog of unpaid gratuities etc with all the series of bail outs since the coming on board of the magnanimous

Buhari/Osinbanjo administration 15 months ago.

 

 

 

Abubakar Usman, retired Permanent Secretary, Bauchi. [email protected]