By Seyi Odewale
The Director-General, of the John Odigie Oyegun Public Service Academy (JOOPSA), Precious Imuwahen Ajoonu, has said that contrary to insinuations that civil servants are not productive, they constituted the bulk of personnel she used to establish the academy which is now attracting patronage from all over the country in just one year of its existence.
Ajoonu stated this during the JOOPSA Open House held in the facility where she commended Governor Godwin Obaseki for their foresight in establishing the academy.
Participants were drawn from the media, civil society, academia, religion, social media activists, entrepreneurs, and professionals among others.
She said, “We have trained over 7,000 people since we started last year and His Excellency always says that the civil and public service is the engine room of government so we must train our workforce as a matter of urgency. He is not going to reap the benefits of this pace but imagine what it will be in the next ten years if we consistently upscale and train our people.
“When I was drafted to come and operationalise this academy, the governor told me he wants to build a world-class training centre. I asked the governor if I would be allowed to do things on my own or just be a yes-man because one of the things we did not want to do was to put up a template and just start running training.
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“There is a report that this place was organising training so we decided to involve the civil servants so that whatever we are going to do will be sustainable and that was how I asked all the ministries to send personnel to us including the Civil Service Commission.
“I requested for those who were currently doing training in the service and I brought all of them here. Some of them were sceptical and believed it would not work but I said if we can convince these critics, then we can make progress and that is the success story today.
“The training document we are using was collectively produced by all of us after the civil servants were convinced that we were not coming like the government as usual. His Excellency did not set this up for political gains because it was not going to give him any.”
In his presentation, Dr Christus Etoka urged participants to creatively use their minds which he said is what can distinguish a man from others.
