Standard Operating Procedure: FCTA Agencies Get Ultimatum

By: Damilola Adeleke & Favour Onakpoma

The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has issued a two-month ultimatum to its Secretariats, Departments and Agencies (SDAs) yet to submit their Standard Operating Procedures to do so or be sanctioned.

FCTA Permanent Secretary, Adesola Olusade, gave the deadline while addressing participants at a one -day validation workshop for optimization of the SOP manual on Wednesday in Abuja.

According to him, any SDAs that didn’t submit its SOP before April would not access the month’s over-head.

“April’s over-head will be paid only to SDAs that have submitted their SOP. Since commencement of the exercise in FCTA and the measures the administration has taken so far, it is expected that all Secretariats, Departments and Agencies should key in.

“SOP is very important to you, and since we started, some experts came in to see that the exercise meets the international best practice. We have to abide by it. This will strengthen FCT Administration’s SDAs and bring about efficient service delivery in all areas,” he said.

“There must be a form of sanction to encourage submission, the easiest one we could do is to get your SOP ready before any over-head, if the SOP is not there, the over-head can not be released. So, we are insisting that finish your SOP and get your over-head”, the Permanent Secretary stressed.

Olusade, therefore, directed the Department of Treasury to pay April over-head only to those SDAs that have submitted their SOPs and have proof of submission.

Speaking earlier, Acting Director, Department of Reform Coordination and Service Improvement, Dr Jumai Ahmadu, said that the remaining SDAs would be encouraged to submit their SOPs before the deadline.

“We have been on this matter for almost a year now, and the turn-out is not very encouraging from the SDAs that are yet to submit their SOP,” she lamented.