A strategic partnership that works between the Anambra State Local Government Service Commission, LGSC and the State ICT Agency, on Friday, yielded in the first-ever computer-based promotion examination for local government workers across Anambra State.
The CBT-Based promotion examination was for Officers of Grade Level 06 to 07, 13 to 14, and 15 to 16, across the 21 Local Government Areas of the state.
Our monitoring team at the Anambra State Staff Development Centre, venue for the examination, reports that the exercise was conducted seamlessly in batches, while the promotion candidates organized themselves in an orderly manner.
Speaking with newsmen after he monitored the exercise, the Chairman of the Anambra Local Government Service Commission, Mr Vin Ifeanyi Ezeaka recalled that Mr Governor, Prof Chukwuma Soludo, in the Solution Agenda, made clear his vision to digitize Anambra state and to achieve that, the people must be computer literate.
In line with this vision, he said, the commission had started taking steps to make its workforce digitally-literate, and subsequently sought the governor’s approval and got it, to train 1,000 workers in the first phase, but eventually trained 1,600 people.
“The second batch will see the rest of the workers trained. But having trained the workers, we found a lot of issues regarding the paper promotion examinations and that brought about the idea of this CBT-based examination.
“Again, we felt that Mr Governor, having conducted the recruitment of 5000 teachers using CBT-based exams, it will be wrong for any agency or arm of the government to go back to paper exams.
“It is therefore our view that the CBT-based exams will help entrench transparency and competence, as well as build trust in the system as the workers know their scores even before they leave the examination hall,” he said.
On the partnership with the ICT Agency, Ezeaka described it as awesome, insisting that Mr governor’s decision to establish the State ICT Agency shows that he is genuinely committed to making the people of Anambra digitally-literate.
“The ICT Agency is doing well, in the sense that whenever we call them, they answer us. It was less than one week we informed them and you can see the success of the exercise.
“Initially, we used to engage the services of consultants outside the government system but we are partnering with the agency now.
“With this partnership and the expertise the agency is bringing on board, we are now running this exercise more efficiently and at far less cost to the commission and the government.
“We have the confidence that with what we have seen in this partnership, the exercise will be devoid of manipulation as the agency is a credible agency of government and would not do anything to jeopardize the integrity of the process,” he said.
In his remarks, Chukwuemeka Fred Agbata, the MD/CEO, Anambra State ICT Agency, said it is the desire of Mr Governor, to get every tier of government in the state to perform at maximum speed in the effort to build a liveable and prosperous Anambra State.
According to him, the Local Government System is not giving what is required of it, hence the governor’s passion to equip administrators under the system with the necessary resources for optimum output.
“The Local Government Administration, which is critical to the agenda of Mr Governor, in his opinion, is not working.
“Hence, his passion to consistently equip the local government administrators with the necessary resources starting with remodeling and rebuilding them and also going forward to equip them with the required tech tools.
“However, these tech tools require competent personnel, hence the need to introduce modern methods of examining their competence and suitability to remain in the service,” CFA said.
Agbata opined that the expertise the ICT agency is bringing to bear in the process represents its commitment, in tandem with the vision of Mr Governor for setting it up, to explore strategic partnership with relevant agencies and arms, leveraging technology.
On his part, the Secretary of the Commission, Barr Stan Nwata, noted that the initiative which is in keeping pace with the digitization initiative of Mr Governor, said the digital tests will bring an end to the regime of manipulation of promotion exam results, illicit award of marks, and other bad attributes of paper examinations.
He observed that with the partnership with the State ICT Agency, they are taking note of the minor hiccups experienced in the pilot phase, and will correct them going forward.
Some of the candidates for the exams, Alor Jane from Njikoka LGA, Joseph Akaeze from Anambra West LGA and Vivian Obi from Anaocha LGA, in unison, hailed the partnership that yielded in the initiative, adding that it will make them dedicate more efforts towards becoming fully digitally-literate.
Describing the exercise as stress-free as against what obtains with the paper promotion examinations, they revealed that from the examination hall, they already know whether they failed or passed and the issue of missing results is now a thing a thing of the past.
They however called for more training to enable get acquainted more with the technology revolution going on in the state.
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