Mr. Adesola Olusade, the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA), has been regarded as a fully bred public servant who is devoted to his profession and driven to always make it better.
The description was featured in a press release made on Sunday by a civil society group, Pro-Impact Initiative, and signed by its coordinator, Dr Osamudiamen Isokpehi.
The organisation, which was responding to smear tactics against the permanent secretary, encouraged the public to reject the creation of lies about a guy who has done his best to make the FCTA a better and efficient place to work.
Dr Isokpehi appealed to those carrying out such “satanic acts and their sponsors to redirect their time, energy and resources to ventures that would improve their lives and impact the society positively”
He noted that since the coming on board of Mr Olusade, “Regular Training is now being done with the ugly old practice of doing trainings on ‘man knows man bases.’ 40 per cent of Training Funds from each Department is expected to be pulled into the Department of Human Resource for them to identify people based on their specified training needs.
“Targets have been placed for trainings under the SOPs and Departments who failed to meet their quota are usually called to order where complaints emanate from the staff.”
The group noted that the Payment of Peculiar Allowance to staff soon after the exit of the former Minister, Mal. Mohammad Musa Bello was a testimony to the welfarist posture of Mr. Adesola who believes that when workers are well motivated, they tend to give their best.
Dr Isokpehi went further to argue that Mr. Adesola is equally reputed to have “used his Office to raise the Internally Generated Revenue of FCTA which made a monumental leap from N92.7B in the first half of the year when compared to N150B in 2022, N124B in 2021 and N102B in 2020.
“Under these reforms, revenue collection from the Six Area Councils are now harmonized into the FCT-Inland Revenue Service eliminating the need for consultants.”
Operations of the Department of Roads Traffic Services are now digitalized while the new Park and Pay Policy is smoothly on course courtesy of the Permanent Secretary’s Civil Service Reform Initiatives.
The group further pointed out that “over 3000 staff of FCTA have so far received Basic Digital Skills in an effort by the Permanent Secretary to meet the Digitalization efforts of the Administration. By 2025, Government Operations in the FCT are expected to be fully digitalized. This is courtesy of the deliberate Policy Initiative of the Permanent Secretary, Mr. Adesola Olusade who wants every staff to be digitally compliant ahead of the targeted date to completely transform the Civil Service in FCTA.”
Speaking on promotion of staff, Dr Isokpehi affirmed that
“Regular Promotion of Staff as at and when due with payment of the Promoted benefits has now become the norm in FCTA with the reform instituted by the Permanent Secretary.
“Before his posting to FCTA as the Permanent Secretary, backlog of Promotion Arrears amounting to Billions of Naira was owed staff. As I write, none of the over 32,000 strong workforce is being owed a dime. 100 Deputy Directors have now been promoted to the rank of Directors after a very highly competitive process.
“Recently a Personnel Payroll Audit was announced by the Permanent Secretary which will be digitally performed with the view to weeding out ghost or non-existent workers in attempts to drastically reduce the monthly wage bill of N8B which the Territory is incurring every month on recurrent expenditures.”
The group noted that , “ It is also on record that Mr. Olusade streamlined all contract payment processes to make it easy for anyone who came into the FCT and becomes the Minister or Permanent Secretary to easily understand files that were paid with references, name of the project and level of completion backed up with pictorial evidence and dates.
“National Shopping has not been business as usual since Mr. Adesola became Permanent Secretary. He reformed this process by putting in place guidelines that must be put on board to merit National Shopping, a Procurement Term for handling emergency issues in the office that cannot wait for the long tendering process of procurement.”
Dr Isokpehi went further to state that “due to the Permanent Secretary’s insistence, the Annual Staff Recognition Award System commenced in FCTA for the first time in the first quarter of this year in line with the Federal Executive Council in 2021. This introduced a healthy competition among staff for awards with concomitant effects on increased productivity that is driving service delivery in FCT.
“Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), a Federal Government’s policy that things should be done in a structured manner which is meant to reduce expenditure on trainings was introduced by Mr. Olusade Adesola. So far 17 Departments in FCT are now fully automated and are deploying their SOPs accordingly.
“Through SOPs, the Annual Performance Evaluation Report (APER) will soon give way to the Performance Management Systems (PMS) where each staff will have their job prescription and every quarter, staff and their supervisors will seat down and analyze work done and review work plans for the future. “
Also speaking on the allegations that the permanent secretary is a tribalist , Dr Isokpehi challenged those “peddling such lies to go round the FCTA and check how many of his tribesmen are in key positions compared to some other tribes. This was how the former permanent secretary, Sir Christian Ohaa was accused of being a tribalist by these same characters and taken to berekete radio for crucifixion. Many thanks to the ordinary president , Ahmed Isah who investigated and found it to be a big lie”.