Twenty-one directors on Salary Grade Level 17 in the Federal Civil Service who sat a written examination as part of the process of appointing them as permanent secretaries failed the examination.
This is contained in a circular, titled ‘Re: Selection exercise for the appointment of permanent secretaries in the federal civil service,’ dated June 1, 2021, and signed by Sunny Echocho on behalf of the examination committee.
The 21 directors were among 46 senior officers who took the examination on Monday in Abuja.
The remaining 25, who passed the examination, are now qualified for the next stage, the Information Communication Technology proficiency test, which held on Thursday.
Federal Government had in May announced the shortlisting of 47 directors for the examination among the 51 candidates who earlier faced a panel, with only 46 directors scaling to the next stage.
It was learnt that the the 21 directors that failed scored below 50, the 25 directors who passed the written examination and were invited for the next stage were those who scored 50 and above in the exercise.
While one of the 21 directors, who failed the examination, scored 33.5, being the lowest score in the examination, a director with 68.5 was the candidate with the highest score.
Names of the officials were not indicated on the document, but were identified by their service numbers.
Those who pass the Thursday ICT test on will qualify for the last stage, which is an interactive session with a broad-based panel of experts and practitioners.
At the end of the exercise, only five of them would emerge to fill the vacancy in the five states of Ekiti, Katsina, Nasarawa, Enugu and Lagos.
It was also learnt that Thursday’s examination that was moved to the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) Complex, in another circular, was due to security concern over a planned protests by some aggrieved persons and groups.
(Daily Trust)