It was former President Olusegun Obasanjo who once said, “Nigerians have for too long been feeling short-changed by the quality of service delivery by which decision are not made without outside influence and files do not move without being pushed with inducements.”
Obasanjo who was speaking at the Joint session Of the new national assembly in 2003 lamented that public offices have for too long showcases combined evils of inefficiency and corruption, whilst being impediments to effective implementation of government policies.
However, to overcome poor service delivery, ensure customer satisfaction and manage the performance expectation gap between the government and citizens on issues of service delivery, SERVICOM, an acronym derived from Service and Compact was instituted.
The Special Presidential Retreat deliberated on the report (Service Delivery in Nigeria: A Roadmap) and ended with the conclusion of entering into a “Service Compact With All Nigerians.’
Instituted in 2004 as machinery for ensuring the delivery of effective public service delivery in Nigeria by Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of government, SERVOCOM carry out surveys of services and customer satisfaction.
In universities, it aimed at sensitising the community and the citizenry to demand quality service as a right at all times.
A Nodal Officer at National Universities Commission (NUC), Aliyu I. I said SERVICOM Unit is the engine for service delivery in University, hence the need for University management to imbibe the culture of carrot and stick approach to improve service delivery in their institutions.
“Management should give maximum support for SERVICOM activities, University community should be encouraged to report cases of service failures through the use of available complaint/suggestion boxes and other avenues.”
However, stakeholders at a recent quarterly and capacity building meeting of the Global Ministerial SERVICOM Committee, hosted by the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), stressed the important role of SERVICOM in universities.
Deputy Vice-Chancellor of NOUN, Prof. Isaac Sammani Rabo Butswat who represented the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Olufem Peters, said in his remarks that NOUN was happy to host the meeting at the university because of the important role SERVICOM plays stressing that the university will always support their activities.
He emphasised the importance of the services rendered by SERVICOM, saying that they deliver efficient and quality services to their clients.
Butswat said the University too has attained more efficient services through SERVOCOM.
On her part, the Focal Officer NOUN, Mrs. Eunice Riki, stated that she has an excellent backing from the university management which makes it easier for her to discharge her duties as the SERVICOM representative.
She said that the management of the university has brought up a super system called e-ticketing which is aimed at cutting off the bottlenecks or things that were delaying in solving students issues.
Riki said with the launching of the system it has provided easy way to resolving students’ complaints and respond to inquiries.
She stressed that with the system in place SERVICOM is still the major stakeholder because they were part of the launching of the system and that they are still the chief monitor of the system.
Riki further said the relationship with the management of their organisation is very important and to be proactive and put in more effort to achieving the desires results.
Mrs. Stella Benson from the SERVICOM office, Presidency, said the initiative of SERVICOM is to ensure effective quality service delivery and attending to service failure in any organisation.
She urged the participants to make themselves visible and relevant in the areas they know that their impacts will be felt, and project themselves for timely service delivery.
“Structures do not deliver services, but the people do, so if we are really committed in doing our work as we are supposed to do it as focal officers and desk officers, the organisations will feel the impact of SERVICOM,” Benson said.
She commended them for being committed in driving the initiative which, she said, it can be quite challenging but it was a service they have offered themselves to do and they should continue to serve in fare, timely and honest manner been transparent and trying always to satisfy the customer that comes to their service window.
On the other hand, the chairman National coordinator, Mr. Ogunkunle Adesoji, said there must be an improvement in their service delivery and should make sure their impart is felt in their various organisations.
In addition the chairman said they should do whatever they can to improve on their service delivery to impact something significant in their organisation.
On a whole, the meeting had in attendance focal officers of various organisations nation-wide, where the officers took turns to give situation reports of their various organisations.
