Nigeria: The Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission ICPC, Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye, SAN, OFR, has called on the Federal Government to re-balance the workforce in order to realize a compensation system that is fair and aligns with productivity.
He made the call at the opening ceremony of a 2-day National Policy Forum on Compensation Management in Nigeria under the auspices of the Michael Imoudu National Institute for Labour Studies (MINILS) in collaboration with the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission (NSIWC) and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Foundation (FES) held in Abuja recently.
Prof. Owasanoye said there was a need for fair compensation and collective bargaining while canvassing for productivity, as “what has not been produced cannot be shared.”
He noted regrettably that the workforce, especially the public sector, was misaligned and groaning under the scourge of fake employment, ghost workers and wrong skill mix.
According to him, “A number of anti-corruption initiatives have overtime pruned down the number of ghost workers, but the malady of fake employment is a work in progress with ICPC, the Head of the Civil Service and the Federal Civil Service Commission working together to tackle this malady.”
The ICPC boss suggested re-distribution or re-alignment of public sector skills to meet the needs of the government and achieve higher productivity in the sector. He equally raised the issue of some critical sectors of government being under-resourced in human capital while others have a redundant surplus, thereby necessitating the right skill mix to be adopted urgently.
“We need to resolve this kind of anomaly with this conversation; while we discuss compensation management, we must be honest to discuss the things that will facilitate and enable fair compensation,” he concluded.
Earlier in his welcome address, the Chairman of NSIWC, Mr Ekpo Nta, said that the forum was born out of an urgent need to put to rest the re-occurring crisis with compensation in Nigeria.
