The news in recent times have been agog with the tragic story about the rise and unfortunate fall of Deputy Commissioner of Police, Abba Kyari. Known as the “supercop,” DCP Kyari used to be (or is it branded as) an exemplar of what a public servant should be, and especially one tasked with the responsibility of maintaining law and order in a country like Nigeria. This is significant.
Nigeria is currently in a paroxysm of lawlessness, especially due to the challenge posed by nonstate actors, from kidnappers to Fulani herdsmen, and from armed robbers to Boko Haram insurgents. This security challenges imply that a lot of expectations are heaped on the law enforcement agencies to perform their duties in keeping the state and citizens safe from lawlessness. Thus, as a “supercop,” DCP Abba Kyari was revered across the country and by his colleagues for upholding the fundamental values of law enforcement. But then, the bubble burst!
Apparently, the lures of criminality were too overwhelming for the once diligent policeman. Success became an incentive not to thread the path of honour, but to be stupendously rich and therefore rise to societal revered outlier success zenith through an end justifies the means Machiavellian streak
The case of Abba Kyari is a scary one from an institutional point of view. We can ask whether the “supercop” represents a dominant species of public servants lurking in the corridors of service, or maybe he is just an aberration. If he is a manifestation of a degenerated public institution, how do we begin to rethink the public service that produced him, in a country poised to rededicate itself to the rule of law? I will like to take the unfortunate example of this fallen public servant as the moment to reflect on the state of the public service in Nigeria, and what is required to make it an institutional template for breeding diligent and ethical public servant that can adequately complement the functions of the state. This reflection speaks to a deeper worry about the relationship between the state of the nation, the driving force propelling the national economy and the state of her public service. We have a situation where, as a result of the humongous and obscene wealth that the political class and national elites display and adore even if with arrant sycophancy; the growingly degraded fortune of the Nigerian middle class, state capture, the unresolved Rich Man-Lazarus complex and eroded bases of inclusiveness; 90% of the nation’s wealth belong to less than 2% of the population, with being streetwise, criminality, yahoo-yahoo, cybercrime, money ritual expanding industry as the only viable alternative to hard work to gain entry into the exclusive world of the Nigerian brand of nouveau rich in a dynamic that our ideologically barren political class are clueless to confront with sufficiently deep problem-solving policy response. This being the existential reality constructed by the scary message that is constantly being sent over the years that hard work, meritocracy and diligence no longer count nor work as values to be cultivated, as well as the politics that the Nigerian nation plays with its destiny. Taken together, with a large and increasing youth unemployment, the Nigerian youths now find crime and criminality more fascinating than education. A large percentage even look into the murky realm of religious fundamentalism and its miracle mentality variant as the gateway, to boot. One of the basic foundations of governance is laid on the axiom of a social contract between the government and the citizens. However, since the state is a mere abstract construct, it is made more concrete by its many functionaries whose responsibilities are to implement the policies of the state.
The most significant of these functionaries are the public servants, especially those ensconced in the civil service core. It is in this sense that scholars of politics and administration have agreed that the public service is a necessary complement for the functional efficiency of the state, and especially of democratic governance in the twenty-first century. However, this functional efficiency that backstops democratic governance becomes jeopardized once the value foundation of the public service is eroded. In other words, in any democratic system, the successes or failures of any government—indeed the legacies of good leadership and the heroism of its public servants—is measured in terms of the extent to which government preserve the ethos of administration and the values of service. Thus, when we say that the public service is a calling or a vocation, it is with reference to the trajectory and framework of values and ethics that led to the founding of the profession.
When the Levites were chosen in the Old Testament of the Christian bible, it was essentially a sacred responsibility. Being chosen demanded that one must be motivated by sacred purpose and a sense of responsibility that moderated one’s life, actions and duties. It is precisely in this sense that the public service is also a calling in the trajectory of the priesthood in the Levitical Order. Public servants are “public priests” who keep the government connected to the citizens in administrative efficiency. It is therefore this inherent nature as a profession and instrument of the state that public service derived its classical formulation by Max Weber. The bureaucracy, for Weber, must be founded on the idea of a legal-rational authority which becomes legitimate by reason of its rules, regulations and principles. The rule-based logic of the bureaucracy not only conditioned it to be apolitical, but also circumscribed the actions of the public servants. Apart from the legal-rational configuration of the public service into a neutral, disciplined, and functional institution, Weber argued that honour is the core of the public service vocation. It is this ethical sense of honour that strengthens the effective technical performance of the state, and hence prevents the bureaucracy from collapsing upon the weight of its own activities. An honourable public official is the one who sees to the execution of a policy to the best of his ability, even if he disagrees with the policy choice.
Indeed, when the Nigerian civil service was inaugurated, the pioneers were able to initiate what is now regarded as the golden era of public administration and the public service in Nigeria because they imbibed the Victorian puritanical values of the twentieth century that undergirded the public service inherited from Britain. These pioneers manifested significant value orientations that demonstrated excellence and professionalism. For instance, they had the capacity to speak truth to
power given that they had kept their hands off the public till. They were groomed around the fundamental value of delayed gratification that kept the concept of the public in their heart. To borrow Robbin Sharma’s title, these exemplary public servants were “leaders without titles.” They abided with the essential character of the public servant as an anonymous and silent game changer who works behind the scene of government decision-making machinery to get things done. However, everything changed when Nigerian political elites began playing politics with her future.
This bad politics is not only extractive, but provincial. It is the politics of ethnicity and godfatherism whose long-term consequences involves sidelining the scarce resources away from the sustenance of the values of the institutions that the state needs to function efficiently on behalf of democratic governance and the Nigerian citizens. It started with the adoption of the principle of representativeness at independence. And this principle overtook the efficiency of the workforce of the civil service with sheer over-bloatedness. And when a person at the helms of affairs employs a public servant on the basis of her ethnic identity rather than meritocratic credentials, the ethos of the public service is not only violated, the institution itself becomes weakened. The idea of state capture that has been researched in terms of governance also has devastating implications for the collapse of the administrative system. Prebendal interests and the rentier culture undermine performance and productivity.
It is essentially bad politics that generate the sociological negativities emerging from youth unemployment that leads Nigerian youths on a path of destruction—from financial and cybercrimes to money rituals. And all this, despite the great noise about anti-corruption as the foundation of good governance in the current political dispensation. These sociological negativities merge neatly with the public perception of government business as one that anyone can get appointed to, without any sense of merit or competence. Government work is government work, so most Nigerians think. It is a place of immense unproductivity. There is even news that Boko Haram “converts” are getting injected into the Nigerian armed forces. It is therefore anybody’s guess how such a blatant ideological cluelessness could serve as the basis of the renewal of the public service. We now have institutions that have become a reward zone for all sorts of elements, from former insurgents to incompetent family members, the streetwise, the highest bidders and political stooges.
This politics deprived the public service of its capacity to modernize its operational and strategic capacity readiness. This essentially is at the root of Nigeria’s classification as a ‘hesitant reformer’.
We are hesitant because the political class could not make up its mind about committing state resources to pushing the public service beyond its bureaucratic hindrances. We are then left with a nagging and fundamental question: When the irresponsible political class refuses to put its political will and action behind the transformation of a dysfunctional public service institution, how then can Nigeria achieve a strong, resilient and value-based public service that will support the objective of democratic governance?
To break out of this vicious cycle requires culture change and a change management that must bring all hands on deck, from the citizens to the civil society organizations. It is high time the citizens began to recognize that the leadership they have is a direct picture of what they deserve. When the citizens are dragged into the game that the political class play with the destiny of the Nigerian state a la stomach infrastructure, then we all are complicit in the systemic failure of the government. The vigilance of the citizens as well as the critical inquiry and actions of the civil society organizations are fundamental to the health of democratic governance. They are the ingredients required to put the political class on its toes on matters that affect us all. It is only when the feet of the government is constantly placed over the fire through constant vigilance that we can
begin to channel government institutional responsibility to the urgent imperative of reprofessionalizing the public service.
The task of re-professionalization becomes critical because of the changing nature of the public service and of public administration in the knowledge economy of the twenty-first century, mediated by the vulnerable, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environment and made worse by COVID-19 exigencies. The modernizing imperatives that all public service systems across the globe subscribe to is meant to bring the public service in line with current developments that bring the system to the cutting edge of technology and professional ethic. In the case of Nigeria, the public service re-professionalization drive is contingent on the gatekeeping responsibility of the civil service commissions and all other cognate structures in the public service. Professional gatekeeping is not only important in the recruitment of a critical mass of highperformers but also in the recalibration of those already in the service in ways that bring them around new competences, orientation and literacies needed to build and sustain the productivity profile of the public service. The civil service commission not only put in place regulated recruitment frameworks, but also partner with the OHCSF to craft professional ethics protocol by which the personal and public accountabilities of the public servants are closely monitored and evaluated.
In the absence of this concerted efforts of the government and the governed in sustaining democratic governance and the value integrity of the institutions that are meant to improve the wellbeing of the citizens, we will continue to have public servants in the mold of DCP Abba Kyari multiplying; those who use the institutions and structures of government to feather their own nest and thereby increase the poverty quotient of both the citizens and the Nigerian state. Who knows how many more of these are still lurking behind institutional successes, and exploiting structural loopholes to amass wealth?
- Olaopais a Retired Federal Permanent Secretary
& Professor, National Institute
For Policy and Strategic Studies
(NIPSS), Kuru, Jos
tolaopa2003@gmail.com