By Josephine Etuk
The Chairman of the State Civil Service Commission, Apostle Sunny Akpadiaha has called for a review of the federal government’s quota based policy that places candidates from States considered educationally disadvantaged on vantage position of access to admission into federal universities and colleges over their counterparts from educationally advantaged States, stressing that this has remained one of the major constraints confronting educational advancement in Nigeria.
Speaking in Uyo while interacting with a cross section of Education Officers who appeared before the Commission’s panel for oral promotion interview, Apostle Akpadiaha decried a situation where geographical concerns take precedent over merit, noting that there is always a significant difference in the quality of performance of students who gained admission on merit against those admitted on the quota basis which has created inequitable effect that has threatened quality of graduates.
He further explained that under this system, special concession of 20% exclusive admission chances are granted candidates from educationally disadvantaged States basically from Northern region to the detriment of others from advantaged States like Akwa Ibom State and many other States from the southern part of Nigeria even if they get higher scores in the entrance examinations.
Akpadiaha therefore advocated for a legislation by the National Assembly to redress the imbalance where access into federal institutions would be strictly on merit and not necessarily on State of origin .
The Commission Chairman used the medium to applaud Akwa Ibom State government’s new policy of redeploying workers serving in Ministries, Departments and Agencies with requisite qualifications to schools in the State to make up for the deficits in teaching personnel, as well as embargo on transfer of service to the mainstream Civil Service, describing the move as a welcome development.
He said the Commission has made concerted efforts to tackle issues of backlog of promotion to deserving Civil servants which has boosted their morale for higher productivity and admonished Managers of school system to make conscious efforts to motivate their workers especially Teachers for effective and efficient service delivery.
While acknowledging the pivotal role of education to the development of the economy , Akpadiaha called for a more holistic approach of tackling challenges in the sector by getting all critical stakeholders involved in charting a forward course for education so as to achieve set objectives and goals.
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