The President and Chairman of the Governing Council of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria (CIPM), Ahmed Gobir, has called for a fundamental transformation of Nigeria’s public service.

He cautioned institutions against digitising inefficient processes.

Gobir, who spoke at the Ogun State 2026 Public Service Day Celebration Lecture in Abeokuta, said technology alone cannot transform public institutions unless existing processes were first redesigned to deliver greater value to citizens.

Delivering the keynote address, where he spoke on ‘Transforming the Public Service: Advancing Innovation, Accountability, Participation and Inclusion’, he said public-sector innovation must go beyond deploying digital tools to address underlying inefficiencies within government institutions.

Speaking to public and civil service leaders, scholars, organised labour, private-sector representatives and other stakeholders, Gobir said the ultimate purpose of public service was not merely to process paperwork but to improve citizens’ lives.

He said citizens experienced government primarily through the quality of public services they received, stressing that, “Government is an idea. Public service is its experience.”

According to him, public institutions must therefore move beyond measuring activities and processes to determining the actual value and impact delivered to citizens.

On innovation, the CIPM president cautioned against what he described as “digitising dysfunction”, stressing that technology could not compensate for institutions that had failed to rethink inefficient procedures.

He challenged public-sector leaders to examine whether existing processes still created public value and urged them to redesign government services around citizens’ needs rather than institutional convenience.

Gobir also identified accountability as critical to restoring public confidence in government institutions, describing it as “the mathematics of trust.”

He said public institutions could earn citizens’ confidence through competence, fairness, transparency, consistency and responsiveness.

He further called for meaningful citizen participation in governance, saying participation should not be limited to inviting citizens to government events after decisions had already been taken.

Rather, he said citizens should be given opportunities to influence decisions that directly affect their lives.

Gobir further urged government institutions to design public services that take into account citizens’ different socioeconomic, geographic, technological and demographic circumstances.

He warned that a service could not be considered truly inclusive simply because it was technically available if significant segments of the population could not access or use it in practice.

The CIPM president also stressed the importance of human resource management in public-sector transformation, noting that no institution could transform beyond its people’s capacity.

He called for greater attention to talent management, leadership development, performance management and capability building across the public service.

He acknowledged Ogun state’s development ambitions and urged the government to pursue a model of transformation that went beyond infrastructure and technology.

He said the state should also focus on building institutions that were responsive, effective and centred on citizens.

Gobir distilled the lecture’s theme into four imperatives: innovation must change the method, accountability must change the culture, participation must change the relationship between government and citizens, and inclusion must change the architecture of public service.

Gobir said the success of public-sector reform should ultimately be judged by its impact on citizens, not by the number of policies or projects launched.

“The ultimate measure of institutional reform will not be the number of policies launched. It will be the number of lives improved,” he said.