Youths will now form thrust of new public service in Kaduna —el-Rufai

KADUNA State governor, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, has said vibrant youths will now form the thrust of the revitalisation and renewal programme of the new Kaduna State public service. He said the move was intended to make the service the pride of the citizens, so that youths would upgrade their skills to match with the best public services in the world.

He made the disclosure at the launch of the programme in Kaduna, on Monday.

The governor maintained that it was now time to implement commitment to reform the public service and restore it to high standards, “to enable it to live up to its substantive meaning.”

el-Rufai noted that the reform programme also offerred a much-needed window to inject the vibrancy of youths into the public service:

“Due to the embargo imposed on civil service recruitment in 2008 and other factors, there are not enough young persons in the service.

“Government will deliberately recruit and inject young and motivated personnel to make the public service better,” he said.

The governor added that “having more young, well-educated persons in public service ranks will also result in the public service more closely reflecting the demograhic of the state it is serving.

“Therefore, we have, for weeks, now opened a job portal on the state government website and ran jingles inviting young people to upload their CVs. Government will recruit from that database and will as much as is possible encourage our private sector partners to source personnel from that portal.”

Earlier, the state chairman of Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Adamu Ango, commended the governor for the initiative, saying civil servants would continue to do their best for effective service delivery.