President Muhammadu Buhari |
The impact of such policies
and programmes on the citizens is determined by whether they have been
implemented excellently or shoddily. This in turn depends on the efficiency and
effectiveness of the civil service. President Buhari, instructively, ran
his government for almost six months without ministers, relying only on civil
servants.
Thus, as a machinery for
the delivery of good governance, the civil service deserves the greatest
attention. There is also need for concerted government efforts to pinpoint the
weaknesses of the service, streamline past efforts to revamp it, and apply
vigorous measures to make it a truly enduring and supportive institution.
The president made some
changes lately through the removal of 17 permanent secretaries and
the engagement of 18 others. But this alone will not make the civil service
more efficient. All civil servants, beginning from the permanent secretaries to
the lowest official, should have a new template of values for them to be
effective.
Efforts at improving the
civil service have not been in deficit as many panels had been set up
to reform it, beginning with the Morgan Commission of 1963; followed by
the Adebo Commission of 1971, the Udoji Commission of 1972-74, the Dotun Philips
Panel of 1985 and the Ayida panel of 1994. Even after the country
returned to democracy in 1999, fresh attempts were made to reform the civil
service. This resulted in some reform proposals made in 2009 by the then Head
of the Civil Service, Stephen Oronsaye.
But despite these reforms, the civil service has not been in a position where
it can discharge its functions irreproachably.
In its glorious years, the
civil service was a great stabilising factor in governance. Civil servants
guided new public officers, such as ministers, on their duties.
They checked the excesses of some ignorant or mischievous public
officers. Over the years, civil servants deviated from their stabilising
role in governance, and gradually became the breeding ground for many societal
ills, including greed, depravity and infamy. Instead of guiding fresh
public officers on how to effectively perform their duties, civil servants
began to teach them how to truncate those responsibilities. They taught
them how to exploit or create loopholes in the laws of the land to amass
wealth for themselves.
An otherwise upright
public officer would succumb to the pressure from civil servants to be
corrupt if he does not guard his values jealously. In the end, most public
officers lose their integrity to the pressure of civil servants who then
benefit immensely from the consequence. Today, many civil servants are among
the richest Nigerians, acquiring choice property at home and abroad.
Apart from directly
stealing from the treasury, they also steal from the citizens, by deliberately
causing delay and loss of opportunities; by demanding bribes to
perform their statutory duties, including taking a file to a superior officer,
awarding contracts or granting access to their superiors.
Thus, to return the civil
service to the path of honour, there must be value re-orientation. The civil
servants must imbibe the virtue of contentment. They must learn to live
within their legitimate incomes. They must not forget that they are occupying
offices meant to serve the people. They must not use these offices to immerse
the people they are meant to serve.
The new permanent
secretaries have a role to model good conduct. Their character must be
exemplary such that those working under them would nurse no doubt that a
moral pattern has been set for them. The permanent secretaries cannot
expect those working under them to make judicious use of
available resources when they (civil servants) can see that their
superiors are misappropriating official funds. It is only when the
permanent secretaries are disciplined that they can enforce discipline among
the civil servants.
President Buhari says he is
set to run a prudent government. For the permanent secretaries to be
relevant in this government, they must align themselves with this vision
of the president. Prudence and integrity must be the watchwords in the
performance of their duties so that enough resources can be freed to
improve the well-being of the citizens. They cannot perpetuate a culture of
impunity, profligacy and ostentation at a time the president has said that
the nation is broke and that he would run a lean government. If they deviate
from this template, they stand the risk of being retired prematurely; or going
to prison for misappropriating the nation’s resources. (guardian)
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