The Centre for Public Accountability has called for cancellation and review of the recently concluded Promotion Exams from Directorship cadre to Permanent Secretary in the Country.
Only 20 directors out of 85 initially invited to seat for promotion to the post of Permanent Secretary in the federal civil service successfully scaled through the exercise.
Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HOS), Dr. Folasade Yemi- Esan, made this known following release of the results.
While she explained that out of the 85 candidates, four of them did not show up for the examination, in what she alluded to fear.
Yemi-Esan said there was need to emphasize meritocracy and integrity of the selection process.
“It should not be about the number of successful candidates but the quality of the candidates.”
According to her, President Bola Tinubu has by this exercise further assured that he is not pressured by any socio-political interest to compromise the present system of subjecting all candidates to various levels of assessment to test their competence.
However, Centre for Public Accountability in a statement signed by Nuhu Adams, Director, Public Governance Monitoring CPA issued, on Friday, alleged that the process was marred with huge controversies, calling for total cancellation of the entire process and need to review it.
The statement reads in part; “The Centre for Public Accountability in her quest to ensure that all strata of the states are performing optimally and riddled of corrupt practices usually witnessed and especially with Civil Service, that is being maintained by Taxpayers Fund.
“We followed the recently concluded Promotion Exams from Directorship cadre to Permanent Secretary and discovered it was marred with huge controversies that call for total cancellation of the entire process and need to review it.
“It will be recalled that, 85 Directors from 5 states of the federation and two geo-political zones, namely North Central and North East zones sat for promotion exams on the 6th of November, 2023, with results released on the 7th of November, 2023.
“It was reliably gathered that long before this exercise, there has been complaint about the composition of the Examine Committee.
“As a result of this long time controversy and lack of trust in the exercise, 4 of the qualified Directors refused to show up, nor write the said exam despite initially registering to write the exam. This is aside of the Directors that declined to register for the exams due to lack of confidence in the selection process that would end up producing Permanent Secretaries already predetermined by the Head of Service.”
