CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1    Background of the Study
In recent times, world attention is being focused on the importance of manpower planning and development as panacea to problems associated with economic growth of nations. This is due to the fact that the growth of tangible capital stock of a nation depends to a considerable degree on human capital development. Without adequate investment in developing human capital which is the process of increasing knowledge, skills and the capacities of people in the country, the possibility of the growth of that nation might be minimal (Gyang cited in Eleyowo, Salako, and Oketokun, 2015).
The success of any organization whether drawn from the public sector or private sector in the contemporary business world depends on the quality of human resources available to it to initiate and implement its policies and programmes. According to Solkhe and Chaudhary (2011) human resource is the most vital factor of production and labour productivity. They also maintained that a positive future-oriented human resource development is essential for the efficient and effective service delivery in the public.
In line with this, Appah, Coleman and Busine (2011) pointed out that the public sector especially in the developed world often invest several millions of money on training and development of their human capital for effective service delivery. This demonstrates the importance government attach to its human resource in the achievement of their national goals. However, in the developing world like Nigeria little or nothing is being done to plan and develop employees in many public corporations, employees often become obsolete like machines thereby hindering their ability to effectively and efficiently deliver the needed services to the people (Odumeru and Ilesanmi, 2013).
The development of indigenous manpower to serve as the propelling force for public service delivery in the public sector is no doubt a key to Nigeria’s socio-economic and political development. This is quite indispensable considering the argument of the concept of transfer of technology as a catalyzing tool for the development of the developing countries of which Nigeria is one (Ake cited in Agunyai, 2015).
The history of planning is as old as man himself. Planning started from the ancient era during the primitive period when there were no industries or firms. Planning is the process of setting goals, developing strategies, and outlining tasks and schedules to accomplish the goals of an organization. It includes the selection of objectives, policies, procedures and programmes from among alternatives. According to Terry (2002), planning is a continuous process and there is no end to it. It involves continuous collection, evaluation and selection of data, and scientific investigation and analysis of the possible alternative courses of action and the selection of the best alternative.
Manpower planning is a systematic analysis of human resource needs in order to ensure that right number of employees with necessary skills are available when they are required (Igbinomwanhia, 2010). An organization’s human resource department complete several tasks relevant to its workers including collecting of information, creating objectives, goals and making conclusion in order for the organisation to achieve its goals. The reason for using manpower planning in the public sector is to find out how many employees do the organization have, what kind of workers do the organization have, how an organization should use their available resources and how can the company stay and maintain its workers.