Recruitment into the Nigerian Federal Public Service: Constraints and Agenda for Reform

Abstract

It has been observed that the Nigerian Federal Public Service has been bedeviled by over blotedness, low productivity, ineffectiveness, cronism and manpower lopsidedness. These challenges have been traced to the flawed recruitment into the service. This research work investigated the recruitment process into the Nigerian public service using primary and secondary sources of data and the Federal public service as a case study and discovered that, both exogenous and endogenous social pressures have been the banes of recruitment into the Nigerian Federal Public Service. The study therefore proposed an agenda for reform which among others include: re-orientation of public officials handling recruitment process; establishment of Bureau of Employment Monitoring (BEMO) to perform oversight function over recruitment process; sanctioning of erring government officials handling recruitment into the service and reforming the Nigerian economy with a view to stimulating more jobs in the private sector and thereby reducing the social pressures on public service jobs.