Nigeria: How Many Public Servants Has Nigeria?

14 August 2014

IT is a shame that today, a debate rages on the number of civil or public servants there are in Nigeria. Which is why, doubly shamefully, the nation does not have a sacrosanct figure of how much is spent on those servants and for what level of productivity.

It is more than three weeks since the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN) debunked as bloated the figure of 1.2 million announced before the House Committee on Health by the Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation (BOF) to be the current staff strength of the Federal Public Service. Asserting that available records on the entire public service put the right figure at about 870,000 strong, the ASCSN Secretary-General also doubted that N1.8 trillion was being spent annually on public servants as personnel costs. But he did not volunteer any amount being expended annually on the 870,000 public employees. Nonetheless, the trade union called on the Federal Ministry of Finance (FMF) to make public a detailed breakdown of the personnel costs by various categories of public servants and political office holders.

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