Digital governance adoption must accelerate across federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies, the Arewa Professional Forum said. The group tied that demand to recent developments around the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, arguing institutional weaknesses—not individual blame—exposed gaps that only technology-driven systems can close.
In a statement dated Friday, July 31, 2026 and signed by National President Comrade Auwal Muhammed, the APF urged the Federal Government to consolidate public service reforms that replace manual processes with secure digital workflows. The Forum said delays, poor documentation and verification problems that surfaced in the PFIPC matter illustrate how paper-based systems create avoidable administrative risks.
The statement highlighted reforms led by the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mrs. Didi Esther Walson-Jack, OON, mni, as evidence the civil service is already shifting toward automation. Over the past two years the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation has rolled out an ambitious public sector digital programme, deploying an Enterprise Content Management System, GovMail, the 1-GOV Cloud Platform and other tools meant to modernise record keeping and inter-agency communication.
The APF argued those platforms are replacing cumbersome paper procedures with systems that create verifiable audit trails, speed approvals, strengthen accountability and make procedural shortcomings easier to detect and address. The Forum said expanded digital adoption would improve electronic correspondence, merit-based processes, payroll integrity, online examinations and capacity-building efforts, particularly across Northern Nigeria where the benefits are already visible.
The Forum called on the Federal Government to sustain and broaden the current digital reforms across all MDAs, urging consolidation of gains within the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation rather than distraction by isolated administrative episodes. It said a fully digitised communications, approvals and records framework would protect official records, enhance inter-agency collaboration and position Nigeria’s public service to meet modern governance and economic demands.
