PFIPC: Arewa Professional Forum Backs Adoption Of Digital Governance Across MDA’s

The Arewa Professional Forum (APF) has called on the Federal Government to accelerate the adoption of digital governance and paperless administration across Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).

It said recent issues involving the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) highlight the need to strengthen institutional systems.

In a statement issued on Friday and signed by its National President, Auwal Muhammed, the forum said the focus should be on consolidating public service reforms that use technology to improve transparency, accountability and efficiency, rather than assigning blame over administrative lapses.

“It is precisely because of challenges such as these that the Head of the Civil Service has consistently championed the vision of a technology-driven and paperless Federal Civil Service,” the statement said.

The APF praised reforms led by the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Didi Esther Walson-Jack, saying initiatives such as the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) System, GovMail and the 1-GOV Cloud Platform were modernising the federal civil service by replacing paper-based procedures with secure digital platforms.

According to the forum, the reforms have improved record management, decision-making, inter-agency communication and accountability through verifiable digital audit trails.

“A fully digitised government communication, approvals and records management system would significantly reduce administrative lapses by creating verifiable audit trails, strengthening institutional accountability and improving transparency across public institutions,” it said.

The group added that wider deployment of digital systems across MDAs would make procedural shortcomings easier to detect and prevent while strengthening public confidence in government institutions.

It said the benefits of the reforms were already evident in several parts of the country, particularly in Northern Nigeria, where federal institutions had recorded improvements in electronic correspondence, online service delivery, payroll integrity, digital performance management, merit-based processes and staff capacity development.

The APF also argued that digital governance was essential for improving service delivery in key sectors such as education, healthcare, agriculture, infrastructure and public administration.

“No modern government can continue to rely predominantly on manual administrative processes while seeking world-class standards of transparency, efficiency and accountability,” the forum said.

It urged the Federal Government to sustain and expand digital transformation initiatives across all MDAs, saying ongoing reforms in the Office of the Head of the Civil Service should be strengthened to build a more transparent, efficient and accountable public service.