The Arewa Professional Forum has called on the Federal Government to accelerate the adoption of digital governance and paperless administration across Ministries, Departments and Agencies, saying recent developments surrounding the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council underscore the need to strengthen institutional systems.

In a statement shared with PUNCH Online on Saturday, the forum’s National President, Auwal Muhammed, said attention should be directed at strengthening ongoing public service reforms capable of preventing administrative lapses through technology-driven governance.

“The issues surrounding the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council should serve as a wake-up call for government institutions to eliminate manual processes that often create opportunities for delays, weak documentation and verification challenges,” the statement read.

The forum said the focus should be on consolidating reforms rather than assigning blame, adding that one of the landmark achievements under the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mrs Didi Esther Walson-Jack, has been “the transformation of the Federal Civil Service through digital innovation, automation and the drive towards a fully paperless public service.”

According to the statement, the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation has, over the past two years, implemented “one of the country’s most ambitious public sector digital reform programmes” through the deployment of the Enterprise Content Management System, GovMail, the 1-GOV Cloud Platform and other technology-driven initiatives.

“The reforms are gradually replacing cumbersome paper-based procedures with secure digital platforms that promote transparency, accountability, efficient record management, faster decision-making and seamless inter-agency communication,” the forum stated.

It added that “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.”

The group further argued that expanding digital transformation across all Ministries, Departments and Agencies would make “procedural shortcomings easier to detect, monitor and prevent while strengthening public confidence in government institutions.”

“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 added.

The forum also said the benefits of the ongoing reforms were already being felt across the country, particularly in Northern Nigeria, citing “improvements in electronic correspondence, digital service delivery, online examinations, merit-based processes, payroll integrity, digital performance management and capacity-building programmes.”

It stressed that “digital governance remains critical to improving service delivery in strategic sectors, including education, healthcare, agriculture, infrastructure and public administration,” adding that “efficient technology-driven systems are indispensable to effective government coordination.”

The statement further argued that “no modern government can continue to rely predominantly on manual administrative processes while seeking world-class standards of transparency, efficiency and accountability.”

The APF urged the Federal Government to sustain and expand digital transformation initiatives across all MDAs, insisting that the reforms being implemented by the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation “should be consolidated and strengthened rather than distracted by isolated administrative issues.”

It added that embracing digital governance nationwide would “strengthen institutional integrity, improve collaboration among government agencies, safeguard official records and position Nigeria’s public service as a more transparent, efficient and accountable institution capable of meeting the demands of a modern economy.”