Dr Joe Abah welcomes you to read APRIL's BPSR e-newsletter...

Publisher's note                  Dr Joe Abah - Director General Bureau of Public Service Reforms Welcome to our e-newsletter for April. During the month, I was privileged to have been invited to address the 4th General Assembly of the African Association of Public Service Commissions in Livingstone, Zambia.

It was an opportunity to see the awesome Victoria Falls, although I wondered why it is still called ‘Victoria Falls’ rather than its proper African name ‘Mosi-Oa-Tunya’ (‘The Smoke That Thunders’). My address was an opportunity to challenge accepted wisdom on issues of governance, democracy and ethics.

We have also focused heavily on supporting the production of handover notes from the current government to the incoming one. Apart from being on the Technical Committee doing the actual writing, we are also on the committee preparing Mr President’s handover speech. Additionally, we partnered with DFID FEPAR to train civil servants on how to write concise but complete handover notes and we are grateful to the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mr Danladi I. Kifasi, CFR, MNI, for making time out of his busy schedule to personally declare the workshop open.  Our lunchtime seminar in April focused on Public Private Partnership, particularly in the current climate of reduced capital budget provision. The attendance at the event was unprecedented and was in the hundreds. We are grateful to the Director-General of the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission for delivering a very good presentation, which is available on our website. Finally, we continued to receive the recognition of others. We were invited to brief officers on Levels 7 to 15 in the Federal Ministry of Finance on the reforms going on in the public service. It was a very vibrant discussion, with some good ideas about areas of future focus for public service reforms. I was also conferred with a Fellowship in Public Policy.   REFORMER MONTHLY