Mr Abel Enitan, The Permanent Secretary, of the Ministry of Police Affairs, says that Performance Management System (PMS) will facilitate effective service delivery and increase productivity in civil service.

Enitan said this during the training on PMS modules 1-5 and 6-9, organized for the directorate cadre of the ministry on Thursday in Abuja.

This is contained in a statement by the Deputy Director, Press and Public Relations Unit of the ministry, Mr Bolaji Kazeem, on Thursday in Abuja.

He said the system would also facilitate the much-needed interface between the superior officers and their subordinates to agree on a work schedule.

According to him, PMS is the latest initiative of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation that will enable improvement in service delivery due to agreement between officers and subordinates and measurement of the productivity of civil servants.

The permanent secretary said the system would afford an opportunity for better interactions between different areas of operational decision-making.

He added that if the service got it right at directorate cadre levels, it would be easier to mainstream it in various departments.

“We decided to involve Deputy and Assistant Directors for a simple reason that they too will come up and assess people working with them.

“And if they get it right and where the director is not easily available, they fill the gap and take up the responsibility of assessing people working under them.

“They can join hands with directors to drive the process successfully,” he said.

Enitan said that PMS was to replace Annual Performance Evaluation Report (APER) with many benefits, compared to APER and the need to understand the process well and impact it on others.

According to him, there will be resistance at different levels because people have not really appreciated the need for PMS but the resistance will be weakened with time.

The resource person, Prof. Adeyemi Ajayi, said that APER was considered to be ineffective, bearing in mind the global change and the need for the Federal Civil Service to improve in its performance drive for national benefits and improvement in service to the citizens of Nigeria.

He added that PMS would reduce the rate of subjectivity and promote objectivity, focusing on the key result areas where civil servants were expected to deliver key results.