Leveraging on Oyo-Ita’s example to reposition civil service

Abdullahi M. Gulloma

Despite many gains recorded by the civil service in Nigeria, corrupt practices, self-service and aggrandisement still pervade the service and batter image of civil servants, Vice President Professor Yemi Osinbajo observes.

The Vice President was speaking at the inaugural quarterly civil service lecture series themed: “Civil Service in a Change Environment: The Change is Now” at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa in Abuja on Tuesday organised by the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation.

He said the nation faces a monumental tragedy when civil servants enrich themselves through corrupt practices, adding that the greatest tragedy a nation can experience is for the civil servants to subvert the system for personal gains when the majority of the citizenry are poor and struggling to make a living.
He said: “The power to do great good or evil lies with a few people who form what we refer to as our civil service. When some of such elite see the opportunity as one for self enrichment by corrupt practices, then the nation faces a monumental tragedy.

“There is no excuse anywhere in a nation where the majority are still poor and struggling to make a living that anyone who has the benefit of good education and good fortune of a job in the civil service should subvert that service for personal gains, I think it’s the greatest tragedy that a nation can experience.”

Osinbajo reminds the nation’s civil servants that sometimes, they “are described as evil servants.” He, however, asked them to take heart, saying: “The best professions are usually the most criticised, but I must say that the wholesome privilege of public service is very easily abused or taken for granted. The public service elite represent, as we have seen, the most important factor in national development.”

Earlier, the Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Mrs. Winifred Ekanem Oyo-Ita, said the federal civil service had been in the forefront of national cohesion, and pledged that under her leadership, the service would chart a new course driven by efficiency, productivity, transparency and the interest of the citizenry.

And this, the Head of Civil Service of the Federation, can do, albeit with difficulty considering the rot in the nation’s civil service, for she brings a rich and vast experience from both the private sector and the civil service to her current position as the head of service of the federation. Mrs Oyo-Ita, it can be said, is a reformatory civil servant who has had her first stint as a permanent secretary at the Ministry of Special Duties and Inter-governmental Affairs.

Despite a seemingly daunting task of nursing the ministry, Mrs Oyo-Ita established a harmonious working relationship amongst the management and staff of the ministry. Mrs. Oyo-Ita was notably able to re-establish Nigeria’s leadership position in the Commonwealth Local Government Forum (CLGF) and secured the award of the hosting of the 2014 CLGF Annual Board Meeting by Nigeria.

In recognition of her administrative acumen, discipline and efficiency, she was asked by the Presidency to supervise the preparation of guidelines on the implementation of constituency projects in Nigeria, a task which she successfully handled. She successfully carried out monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of the 2013 constituency projects in 24 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

Mrs Oyo-Ita’s noble achievements, no doubt, had endeared her to President Muhammadu Buhari who, apparently on his assumption of power, was desirous of appointing a reform-minded person to head the country’s bureaucracy. Among the notable things she did soon after her appointment in October 2015, she initiated the holistic reform of the the country’s civil service to restore the lost glory with a view to ensuring effective service delivery to Nigerians.

In fact, as Mrs Oyo-Ita observed in her presentation during the lecture, “the country, due to a variety of factors, especially since the coming on board of the new government under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari, has entered a new era,” adding: “It is an era where much of the old ways of serving the Nigerian state and its citizens are undergoing a major review.”

Not a bureaucrat to discard the sad past in her effort to build a vibrant and meritorious future, she spoke of the need to build on the brilliant ideas of her predecessors in office to move the service to greater heights. Among the reforms she aims to oversee as the Head of Civil Service of the Federation include achieving financial accountability, value for money through capacity building, and structured training programmes to equip the civil servants with relevant skills to do their work diligently and efficiently.

Worthy of note is the inclusion of personnel structure and performance Management System (PMS), where there would be reward for hard work and effective service delivery and possible sanctions for poor performance. She paid visits to some of the training institutions like the Centre for Management Development to acquaint herself with the institutions’ challenges and discover how best to tackle them.

Happily, Mrs Oyo-Ita, a strict bureaucrat, like Buhari and Osinbajo, hates wastage and leakage of public resources. No wonder when the federal government recently established the Efficiency Unit at the Federal Ministry of Finance, she was found to be a ready promoter and pillar of support for the unit which aims to block leakages and under-the-table dealings in the public service procurement process.

Yet, despite her strenuous effort to reposition the civil service, much remains to be done by the largely corrupt society, which civil servants constitute part of. Of course, it’s doubtful if civil servants can individually and willingly insulate themselves from the mess in the society. While this is not an attempt to make excuse for the civil servants, it’s true that the corrupt among them, and they are many, remind us all of the need to stifle corruption in the society.

Even the Head of Civil Service of the Federation herself said the service was possibly a victim of the overall malaise bedeviling the society. Thus, beyond lamentation, solutions need to be found for all the shortcomings plaguing the civil service and rendering civil servants incapable of delivering on their mandate.

Happily, there is now in place a Head of Civil Service of the Federation that possesses the capacity and competence needed to reform the service through which the government can implement its policies and programmes.
There is, therefore, the need for Mrs Oyo-Ita and the Buhari-led administration to embark on realistic, practical and workable reforms, rather than the usual haphazard and cosmetic approaches adopted in the past.

Essentially, what is needed now is for the government to promulgate programmes and policies that would make it possible for the ‘evil servants’ to be reformed into enviable servants, while leveraging on the good examples of the current Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Mrs. Winifred Ekanem Oyo-Ita.

Among the reforms she aims to oversee as the Head of Civil Service of the Federation include achieving financial accountability, value for money through capacity building, and structured training programmes to equip the civil servants with relevant skills to do their work diligently and efficiently

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