THE REVISED CONDITIONS OF SERVICE FOR FEDERAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT AGENCIES, INSTITUTES AND COLLEGES (COS 2019) AND SCHEMES OF SERVICE (SOS)

Negotiations with the Federal Government, as represented by the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (OHCSF), for the revision of the Conditions of Service (COS) took 15 years – from 2004 through 2019. When eventually it was approved on 7th November 2020, to take effect retroactively from January 2019, the document was not transmitted by OHCSF to the relevant Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), thus prompting the strike action which the Academic Staff Union of Research Institutions (ASURI) commenced on Monday, 21st December 2020.

In apprehending the strike, the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment called a roundtable of all the stakeholders, incorporating the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (OSGF), OHCSF, Office of the Accountant General of the Federation, National Wages, Incomes and Salaries Commission (NWISC), all the Ministries supervising Research Institutes, Colleges and Colleges, the Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria (ARCN), as well as representatives of security agencies. In the early stages of the negotiations in April 2021, the Federal Government directed OHSCF to transmit the Conditions of Service for Research and Development Agencies, Institutes and Colleges (COS 2019) which it approved since November 2019 to the relevant MDAs but the document is trapped within bureaucratic cobweb.

It is unimaginable and a most distressing irony that current officials of the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation (OHCSF) are now surreptitiously asserting that the extant COS and SOS approved in 2004 by the HCSF is a forgery. This evidently is a ploy by these officials to frustrate the approval of the revised COS and SOS thereby continuing to throw the R&D sector into stagnation. With such flagrant insensitivity and uncertainty, it is no surprise then that there is continual brain drain from research institutes to universities and other better paying organizations the moment researchers get their PhDs.