The Federal Government of Nigeria has revealed plans to implement a performance-based salary scheme for civil servants.
This new system will be launched in 2025 and it aims to reward productivity and incentivize better performance within the public sector.
This was revealed recently by Director-General of the National Productivity Centre (NPC), Nasir Raji-Mustapha, while speaking to journalists.
According to Raji-Mustapha, the proposed scheme would deviate from a one-size-fits-all approach to salaries as employees at the same grade level could see a difference in their pay based on their individual contributions.
The government believes this performance-based system will boost the economy, as it directly connects workers’ output to financial reward. Raji-Mustapha talked about the importance of worker participation in the design of the scheme and stated that “labour, as a critical stakeholder, is being carried along in this exercise.”
He said: “We are in the process of developing a productivity-led wage system that will ensure that those who are productive are rewarded for their efforts irrespective of their grade level. Under the proposed system, employees on the same salary scale can earn different wages.”
When asked whether the new proposal on a productivity-led wage system had the backing and input of organized labour, he said such a task couldn’t be carried out without the input of labour.
He said: “Of course, labour as a critical stakeholder is being carried along in this exercise. As researchers, we don’t just do things without considering the recipient of the reports.
“When we started the project about three or four years ago, we held a stakeholders’ forum in which the labour unions participated. We even went further to send a memo to NLC and TUC to ask them whether they will support the proposed Wage System and they said they will welcome it.”
He stated that the report for the first phase of the study was ready and added that the next stage would be to engage different stakeholders to consider and make input before finally forwarding it to the federal government for consideration and possible adoption.