The Reform of the Civil Service

The Nigerian Civil Service has not served the Nigerian people in the last twenty five years. Government secretariats and ministries have, of course, been busy as usual. But the essential public functions for which the Service was set up have virtually ceased. Public light and water are today still in such short supply that every industry, indeed every household, has still to provide its own utilities. Telephones were dysfunctional for two decades until the coming of the GSM. The ports are still choked with goods and corruption. The police, as the investigation of the murder of the Justice Minister has demonstrated, cannot do their job. Teachers, much abused, underpaid, or not paid at all, are more often out on strike than in the classroom. And public hospitals, under-funded, understaffed, under-equipped and chronically short of drugs, are only fit for the destitute. The failure of public service is not, however, simply the result of negligence on the part of civil servants. Even more, it is a sign of terminal distress in government itself. To re-invent the Civil Service, we have to re-invent the Nigerian government as well.

The Challenges of Independence
The colonial Civil Service was a small, privileged and powerful elite. Its role was essentially to keep public order, promote trade with the home country, collect taxes and look after its staff. It did exceptionally well in these limited duties.

But with independence, the very conception of government changed. There was an explosion of programmes and of personnel. Public servants gradually began to take charge of every aspect of life and to take decision about forestry, higher education, and mortgage banking, urban housing, the management of exchange rates and interest rates, petroleum exploration and refining, air traffic control, television broadcasting, money laundering etc. In other words, they managed not only the Nigerian economy but Nigerian life as well.

The young men and women who manned our Civil Service could not have dealt with all these difficult challenges. Where could they have learnt the multifarious skills needed to 1anage the fevers and regulate the heartbeat of a modem state? Moreover, there were other exorbitant demands made upon them. For in addition to the puzzles of the economic and social order, they faced the problem of the ethnic and religious pluralism of the Nigerian nation. Admittedly this was a problem for politicians. But political leadership is only as good as the supporting Civil Service makes it. Similarly, the Civil Service can only deliver public service if it is supported by the political leadership.

The failure of the Nigerian Civil Service was mainly the result of the failure of support from national leaders. The politicians who came to power in the 1960s did not want civil servants to tell rules, regulations and law. They wanted subordinates and ethnic brothers. If a district officer or an assistant secretary insisted too much on the regulations, he could be changed instantly. To survive in such a situation, a civil servant did not have to serve the public. He only had to serve his political boss. He did not need brains or devotion to duty. He needed political connections and servility.

Under the military, the situation was even worse, for military men compounded the indiscipline and greed of their civilian predecessors. The purges of 1976 and 1983 were traumas which ended the age of innocence in the civil service. The sackings swept away some dead wood and some of the finest pillars of the establishments too. They also swept away the very idea of tenure, fair hearing and institutional order. From then on, it did not really matter what you could do. What counted was whom you knew and how much you saved or stole.

It is clear what we as a nation, should do now to change the situation. We are moving into an astonishing new world of the genomics, the computer revolution, laser guidance, global investment flows and biotechnology. With the on-going reduction in the scope and conception of government, the Nigerian Civil Service will necessarily be a small elite, but it must be world class in quality. To compete effectively in the new global market place, the managers and regulators of our society must be equipped with every contemporary skills Six reforms are envisaged.

1. Professionalisation
APGA will take steps to create a professional Civil Service the entrance into which is based upon a competitive examination. The British and Indian civil service examinations which are open to holders of Upper Second Class degree certificates are models in this regard. Every branch of the Service will be manned by professionals whose skills will be constantly upgraded. The Service will be numerically very small as its roles will be primarily regulatory.

2. Protection from Interference
APGA will ensure that the Nigerian Civil Service is safeguarded as a democratic institution and protected from political interference in recruitment, promotion and discipline. The habit of appointing special taskforces outside the regular service to take charge of important projects will be discontinued as a practice which undermines the authority of the Civil Service and blunts its competitive cutting edge.

3. A Code of Conduct
APGA will introduce a revised and updated General Orders applicable to all public servants from the Presidency, the Cabinet and the National Assembly right down to local government councils. The do s and don is of Nigerian public service must be fully spelt out to promote discipline order and probity in the Service.

4. Improved Conditions of Service
Remuneration and security in the Civil Service will be vastly expanded to make careers in the Service attractive to the brightest and best people in the nation. A successful civil servant ought surely to be as well rewarded as a successful banker.

5. Internal Surveillance
A mechanism within the Civil Service will be established for monitoring and policing compliance with both the ethnical and the procedural codes of the General Order.

6. Transparency
At the same time, APGA will insist that the Nigerian public and the media should have freedom of information to know in detail what government and its agents are doing in the name of the people. Without such unfettered access to information, the freedom of the press is a sham and there can be no real public accountability. At the moment the impression is that the actions of government are the private affairs of senior public officials.

The Civil Service is the executive arm of government and until it is re-vitalized government itself can achieve nothing.