‘ASCON, Adding Value To Civil Service Through Training’

The Administrative Staff College of Nigeria (ASCON) is adding value to the country’s civil service through training of civil servants and other capacity development initiatives.
The Director General of the college, Mrs Cecelia Gayya, said this in an interview with newsmen in Abuja.
Gayya said that the college had conducted many training programmes at both the national and international levels.
She recalled that some staff of the Gambian government as well as those of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) and Office of the Head of Service of the Federation among others had been trained at the college.
Gayya also said the college had trained more than 400 staff of NPA in the last three years while it had been conducting promotion exercises for staff of NIMASA in the last four years.
She added that customer satisfaction had been evident through the repeated patronage recorded.
Gayya further said the college had been involved in the mandatory manpower training organised by the Office of the Head of Service of the Federation for about four years for staff on Grade Levels between eight and 13.
Gayya said that some of the major challenges currently facing the college are inadequate funding as well as issues revolving around personnel development and sponsorship.
“The major challenge has been in terms of personnel, because the staff that started ASCON had excellent training nationally and internationally.
“Again, these days getting sponsorship the way we did before is becoming more and more difficult.
“So one of our challenges is in consistently and constantly  building the competencies of our  facilitators to enable them deliver on our mandate.
“ We cannot give what we don’t have, so that is our challenge that we need to put our eyes on, so that our staff don’t become outdated in terms of the kind of knowledge they bring to bear on their jobs,” she said.
She also said the college had been partnering with other organisations such as the African Management Development Institute and Ghana Institute of Management to tackle some of its challenges.
Gayya said the college also received funding from Japan in the training of 25 staff while two others were trained in South Africa.
“ One of the things we are doing is to engage in partnership with organisations; for example, we are in partnership with the Ghana Institute of Management.
“For the purpose of staff exchange, we are also in partnership with the African Management Development Institute.
“We have also gotten some sponsorship from Japan, we had 25 of our staff trained last year and we had two of them trained in South Africa for a period of about  three months.
“So those are some of the ways we are trying to overcome the challenge of funding.
“We are also in partnership with the West Africa Management Development Institute which helped us to train some of our staff just last year.
In spite of the institution’s challenges,Gayya expressed the hope that ASCON will be revitalised in the three cardinal areas of facilities enhancement,staff development and revenue generation.
ASCON located in Topo, Badagry, was established in 1973 by the Federal Government as a management development institution.