No Promotion Racketeering In FRSC – FRSC

A report suggesting promotion racketeering in the Federal Road Safety Corps has been clarified. Mr Bisi Kazeem, the Corps Public Education Officer, clarified the situation in an Abuja statement on Saturday.

“After reviewing the substance of the publication, it has become imperative to clarify the story’s disinformation and falsehoods, which regrettably misrepresented the FRSC,” the statement added.

According to Kazeem, the FRSC was guided by the notion that promotion was intended to advance or elevate deserving officers who had satisfied the appropriate legislative conditions.

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This is defined, according to him, by a combination of existing regulatory instruments such as the Public Service Rules, FRSC Conditions of Service, FRSC Scheme of Service, and FRSC Promotion Policy as approved by the Commission.

“In order to be promoted to the next level in the FRSC, the candidate must have completed the three or four-year waiting period, depending on rank.”

“This clause does not apply to officers transitioning from Assistant Corps Marshal to Deputy Corps Marshal (ACM to DCM), which is based on vacancies in any of the federation’s six geopolitical zones.

“It’s worth noting that the corps only has six DCMs, each representing one of the six geopolitical zones. This means that, except from ACM to DCM, everyone else must wait a set amount of time.

“The officer can only be qualified for promotion after the required period is met and the officer must be free of any disciplinary case(s), ” he said.

Kazeem said that contrary to the author’s claim all promotions in the corps were based on merit, observance of Federal Character Principle and availability of vacancies as approved by the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation on a yearly basis.

“Stating the above criteria has become utterly important to register the transparent and objective nature of FRSC promotion exercise to the minds of the public, the statement said.

The spokesman explained that the five states, Rivers, Bayelsa, Nasarawa, Yobe, and Sokoto that were alleged to have been sidelined did not have a single personnel that was eligible to participate in the promotion exercise as at the time the promotion list was compiled.

“This is so because none of the senior officers from those states has completed the mandatory and statutory waiting period.

“Having said that, it is important to also state, for the sake of clarity, that the states that were alleged to have been favoured which included Imo, Edo, Enugu, Oyo and Ebonyi all have candidates.

“And they all met the necessary requirements for the promotion before they were considered for the promotion exercise,“ he said.

As a media-friendly organization, the corps aims to commend the press’s watchdog role in enforcing transparency and accountability in the public sector over the years, according to Kazeem.

Kazeem asked media to seek suitable clarifications in order to balance their reporting.

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