An appraisal of the Federal Civil Service Strategy and Implementation Plan 2021-2025(FCSSIP25) for the Transformation of Nigeria’s Federal Civil Service

The Nigerian Federal Civil Service has been going through series of well-conceived reforms across different historical epochs. The greatest impact of these reforms was recorded during the country’s fourth republic when the efforts at re-positioning the Federal Civil Service are being guided by a comprehensive blueprint known as the National Strategy for Public Service Reforms (NSPSR) which consigned Civil Service Administration Reforms to the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation (OHCSF). Since the NSPSR was published in 2009, the Federal Civil Service had no implementation plan for its intended reforms until 2016 when efforts were geared toward the development of the first implementation plan known as Federal Civil Service Strategy and Implementation Plan 2017-2020(FCSSIP20) which was launched in 2018 and was subsequently implemented till December 2020. The successor plan, FCSSIP25, which came into existence in December 2021 consequent upon its approval by the Federal Executive Council (FEC), was officially launched by President Buhari on 23rd June, 2022, and since then, its implementation has commenced full blast. The FCSSIP25 has continued to provide focus and structure for the series of reforms that are ongoing in the Nigerian Federal Civil Service. However, the question is whether or not the FCSSIP25 would transform the federal civil service into “a world class service for accelerated national development” by 2025 despite some constraining factors including funding, cultural, behavioral and attitudinal orientations among others.