The Destruction of the Nigerian Civil Service

Head of the Civil Service of the Federation or the Federal Civil service Commission or both? Or is it on the recommendation of the Minister who, in my view, is disqualified because of conflict of interest, bias etc? Or some consultants will be hired to do the job since, regrettably, consultants have virtually taken away a large chunk of the functions of Civil Servants. As for Directors, nobody has yet offered any rational justification as to why they should retire after eight years. Unfortunately, this government which harps or "rule of law and due process", has shot itself in the foot by its retroactive application of the circular. At the time the Permanent Secretaries were appointed, they were not told of any limitation on their tenure.

Similarly, the Directors being chucked out of the Civil Service were never told that they would be on that grade for eight years only. What the government has done is to return Nigeria to the days of military rule where retroactive decrees were churned out. As things are now, an aggrieved Permanent Secretary or Director can successfully challenge this premature retirement in a court of law.

A lot of changes have taken place in Nigeria whether for good or bad. Most primary School pupils are between the ages of four and six. If they do well in academic work, they will graduate from the Universities between the ages of nineteen and twenty-three. If they join the civil service after NYSC and barring any hitches, they will become Directors between the ages of forty-six and forty-eight or fifty at most. With the experience garnered over the years and coupled with the huge expenses of training and retraining them, do you send them away simply because you do not need them? No serious country toys with experienced civil servants. I may be wrong but I feel that that circular was "mala fide". Surely, such a monumental decision should have been subjected to debate first and the opinions of retired top bureaucrats sought. To me, an institution like the civil service, should not be reformed on impulse as it has become its lot over the years.

The tragedy of the Nigerian Civil Service is that it has become a laboratory where all sorts of theories, including crazy ones, are tested. It is only after the damage has been done that seasoned retired bureaucrat are brought in to salvage the situation. That was precisely what happened to the Dotun Philips Report and Decree 43 of 1988, which followed it. Therefore, anybody who has read the article written by venerable Mallam Adamu M. Fika. CFR, in the LEADERSHIP Newspapers of 26th October, 2009, will appreciate the damage done and continued to be done to the civil service by the Military ruling class and the political class that replaced them. It looks as if civil servants are a sort of necessary evil to them. Otherwise, why is it that the "heads of civil servants are shaved in their absence"? To me, the civil service is too important an institution to be reformed through the whimsical issuance of circulars.

I have keenly been following commentaries on this matter since the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation issued the circular. Some are emotional, some are biased one way or the other, while some are superficial. I will take the people involved one by one or as a group. The Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mr. Steven Oronsaye, was never a civil servant. He was brought to Abuja from Lagos by Chief Anthony Ani when he was Minister of Finance, to serve him as Special Assistant. This is a purely political post. Therefore, his tenure was tied to that of Chief Ani. Somehow, Mr. Oronsaye became Director-general of the Budget Office which was later taken over by Chief Bode Agosto and who later handed over to Dr. Bright Okogwu. All of them are not civil servants.

Luck continued to trail Mr. Oronsaye who found himself as Principal Secretary to President Obasanjo. Principal Secretary is a political post. Curiously, Mr. Oronsaye became Principal Secretary/permanent Secretary to President Obasanjo. It was an odd combination to have a purely political post and a purely civil service post merged into one office. When president Umaru Musa Yar'Adua took over, he retained Mr. Oronsaye as both principal Secretary/ Permanent Secretary, still a weird combination.

Then, he left the Presidency to become the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance. After he left, a politician was appointed principal Secretary while Dr. Kaigama, a civil servant, was posted from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Presidency as Permanent Secretary. Who merged and later demerged the two posts and why? It looks quite clear that from an early stage, a powerful clique was hell-bent on making Mr. Oronsaye a Permanent Secretary and later to foist him as the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation even though he was never a civil servant. It is only in Nigeria that such a thing can happen because other countries take their civil services very seriously.

To clear the mist regarding how a non-civil servant became a permanent Secretary and later as the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, certain questions must be asked. How did Mr. Oronsaye who was working with a private Accounting firm in Lagos and not with a Local Government, State Government or even an Agency or ParastataI of Government get into the main stream civil service? If he transferred his service from a private accounting firm, when did he transfer and on what grade did he transfer? Even without answers to my posers, it is evidently clear to me that with proper connection, a person can be catapulted to any position, including heading the Federal Civil Service.

As for the directors being chucked out of the civil service through retroactive circular, I sympathise with them. They are victims of an unfair, unjust and uncaring system. They are victims of a skewed system, which allowed their University mates or even juniors to transfer from the States and supersede them. I will give examples of supersession. First, a friend of mine graduated with me from ABU in 1974. I joined the Federal Civil Service in 1975 after the compulsory NYSC while he joined the service of his state. Later he transferred to the Federal Service laterally on Salary Grade level 15 while I was on Salary Grade level 13. By the time I got promoted to Salary Grade 16, he was already a Permanent Secretary. Is this a fair system? Secondly, I know of a Branch Manager of one of the Banks in mid - 19980s who graduated some years after I graduated.

I was mystified later to see the same person as Permanent Secretary in mid - 1990s. Thirdly, there is the case of one of the recently retired Permanent Secretaries who was made to boss some officers who had graduated before he even entered the University. This same person had the nerve to shout obscenities at officers or bang phones on them who, under a normal system, should be his superiors. This is the damage done to the civil service by some of these transfers. When some people say that civil servants are not loyal, which loyalty.? Loyalty to perpetrators of malfeasance or loyalty to an unfair system, which will catapult juniors over their superiors?

The Attorney General of the United States recently shocked fellow Americans by describing them as cowards because of their reticence to debate contentious or touchy issues. I am not an American but a Nigerian with a surfeit of courage to speak my mind. Let us look at the situation of the Permanent Secretaries who were forced to retire after commenting on Mr. Oransaye and the out-going Directors. I sympathise with the Permanent secretaries for being victims of a retroactive circular and the sympathy stops there. How many of them actually began their career at the Federal Level? Most of them transferred from the States where they came to boss officers who should be their superiors, including some of the out-going Directors. Simply put, they exploited or were assisted to circumvent the system. Therefore, it is my considered view that Mr. Oronsaye and some of those permanent Secretaries were beneficiaries of a capricious system. As things stand today, the civil service has lost its luster.

The civil service as it is now, is like an accidented car, which requires mechanics and panel beaters to repair and make it road worthy again. The only people who can do the job are retired hard-nosed technocrats like Chief Allison Ayida, Chief Philps Asiodu, Chief Gray Lange, Ambassador Baba Gana Kingibe, ambassador I. C. Olisemeka, Ambassador Gaji Galtimari, Alhaji Adamu M. Fika, Alhaji Saidu Barda, Alhaji shuiabu Kazaure etc. The Federal Civil Service Commission can organize a retreat at the serene Obudu Ranch to brainstorm on how to get the civil service out of the quagmire it is currently mired in.

For Nigeria to make any appreciable progress, the core values of the civil service as known in the 1960s and early 1970s must be restored; and it is totally insulated from partisanship. As a parting shot, the Civil Service should be a place for unalloyed and dedicated and honest service for the progress of Nigeria and not a place for bargain hunters.