A professor of Public Administration at the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru, Plateau State, Tunji Olaopa has called on the Federal Government to reform the country’s public service.
Olaopa said there is a need to re-strategise and re-think the public service and its basis to address the dysfunctions of the institutional and bureaucratic dynamics within which Nigeria’s public service system operates.
He stated this in Ado-Ekiti, the Ekiti State capital at an event organized by the Ekiti state government to celebrate this year’s African Public Service Day (APSD) and the retiring Head of Service, Mrs Peju Babafemi.
Delivering his lecture entitled: ‘Unfinished Business of Reform in Nigeria, Next level Public Service Reform Agenda,’ Olaopa said several attempts had been made by successive governments to restructure the public service but were abortive due to the nation’s inherent bureaucratic culture that promotes inefficiency and nepotism above meritocracy.
He said that there were evidence-based studies that had clearly confirmed that effective and efficient delivery of service which are the hallmark of public service were adversely undermined by nepotism, incompetence and corruption amongst others.
Olaopa lamented that the country’s civil service had been politicised along party affiliation whereas the civil servants are supposed to be apolitical because they were trained in such a manner to serve any party in power.
This, he said, was impacting negatively on the country’s socio-economic growth and development because public service remained the institutional bulwark that ensures effective delivery of democratic dividends to the citizenry.
He said, “The civil service in Nigeria is perhaps one of the few professions anywhere, where anything goes; where mediocre can infiltrate and find a place to stand. Largely because we have lost the essence of the public service as a vocation, a deep spiritual calling, a professional space where only those with the training, orientation, and discipline to create public value alone should be found.
“Many politicians in the corridor of power through omission or commission have politicised the country’s public service through reductionist thinking where civil servants are taken as boxes and lines in the organisational charts.
In a craving to do damage control, various successive governments were quick to launch reforms, many of which compounded rather than ameliorate bureau-pathology.
He added that the federal and the state governments must take the bulls by the horns by embarking on a holistic reform to remake the nation’s public service and its basis with a view to igniting desired institutional transformation.
In her remarks, Mrs Babafemi expressed gratitude to Governor Kayode Fayemi for daring all odds by appointing her the first female Head of Service in the state since its creation in 1996.
She equally applauded the governor for allowing the civil service in the state to work without any interference, urging other states’ governors to take a cue from Fayemi in building public institutions.
Credit: thenationonlineng.net
