I have been asked to choose a topic for reflection as my 55th birthday gift to the enlarging constituency of reform of the public sector. The tone of the title I have chosen would appear rhetorical and even somewhat provocative especially given the evidence of the short, medium and long-term reform interventions that have littered, especially, the evolutionary path of the Nigerian Civil Service (NCS) since 1954. To ask whether the NCS is irreformable could therefore be seen, and rightly so, as casting some form of doubt on Nigeria’s past reform efforts. If we take the question to be rhetorical however, then the question requires no answer since the evidence of reform in the NCS trajectory speaks for itself. If we take it as provocative, we achieve the same result. Indeed, if the reform of the NCS has been going on for all these years, why would anyone, especially someone who really is in a position to know, still ask if the service is irreformable?
This rhetorical question was not freshly minted, it was the unique angle of a seminar task that I was recently saddled with at a continental professional seminar platform of the African Ministers of Public/Civil Services in Marrakesh where I was put in a difficult position (as a civil servant) of assuaging the frustration of policy makers (largely politicians) and experts in public administration on why, inspite of spirited effort of the political leadership as to why except in Botswana, Mauritius, South Africa and Namibia – those that Prof. Adamolekun in his 2005 research report categorised as ‘advanced reformers’, civil service reform, as distinct from its public service reform success stories like pension, tax, customs, procurement reforms etc., seems to be recording insignificant impact. Disembodied of technicalities, I share a few of my thought at the seminar through this medium, in continuation of our public education series.
The two ways of interpreting the question that this contribution interrogates are in a sense wrongheaded. There is therefore a third approach to the intent of the question. In other words, to ask whether or not the NCS is irreformable is to cast attention on some of those protracted administrative issues and circumstances that have ensured that we continue reforming the institutional frameworks of the civil service system without essentially achieving our central objective. What then does this question suggest? Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Austrian philosopher, gives us a clue: ‘The philosopher’s treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness.’ To ask if the NCS is irreformable is therefore to ask for a diagnostic assessment of past reform efforts vis-a-vis our current reform activities. But beyond the historical excursus, it is to highlight some of the tangible reform landmines and insights that could expedite the transition of the civil service system in Nigeria into the future envisioned for it.
The question of the reform of the civil service system, anywhere in the world, is not ever settled, another way of saying that the road to perfection is always under construction. This is simply the case with the public service as its reform is intimately tied to governance which in itself is an unceasing and constantly evolving process of determining how to make life better for the citizens; a domain that is also undergoing deep seated reforms. The important issue therefore is not to think of settling the question of reform but to constantly reflect on how to reform right and in a manner that ensures that a system will not continue revisiting the same reform issue for as long as change, regarded as a constant, is imperative. In reform, the real issue is not often doing things right, but doing the right thing to get effective and efficient outcomes.
“‘Experts,” says Tom Peters,’are those who don’t need to bother with elementary questions anymore-thus, they fail to “bother” with the true sources of bottlenecks, buried deep in the habitual routines of the firm, labelled “we’ve always done it that way”.’ The first lesson in reform is thus that of how not to make it a tradition; that is, reformers cannot afford to reform for reform sake. Reformers cannot afford to make themselves ‘experts’ in reform matters. Indeed, the issue raised by Tom Peters is peculiar to the civil service because it is a system that is constantly under the threat of becoming bureaucratic. This implies that such a system becomes too overwhelmed by the immensity of its routine work that it domesticates genuine reforms to some trivial administrative changes that leave the real problems-the true sources of bottlenecks-deeply buried behind the thick files. In this context, reformers pay lip service to the necessity of reform while discreetly working to preserve the administrative status quo.
Without the burden of a complicated historical analysis of the trajectory of reform in Nigeria, suffice is to say that the Nigerian civil service, since its inauguration in 1954, has been undergoing series of reforms (this, for me, isn’t the same as saying we are reforming). Beginning with the several reform commissions in the pre-and post-1954 period and up till the evolution of the democratic dispensation, the NCS has been subjected to approximately twenty one reforms efforts. Each of these reforms was targeted at specific issues within the evolving civil service system. For instance, the pre-1954 reforms were essentially concerned with the thorny issue of giving birth to the nascent civil service system while facilitating the smooth exit of the expatriates. On the other hand, the post-1954 reforms had to settle the issues of the critical absence of an indigenous middle executive cadre in the two-tiered civil service system that had most Nigerians in the junior cadre and the issue of remuneration.
By the time the democratic wave was rolling across Africa in the 90s, it has become an established administrative fact that much of what we expected from the reforms have not been achieved. The evolving democratic dispensation revealed a very serious dilemma: How we hope to democratise without an adequate and functional civil service institution already working in tandem with global best practices? In other words, the civil service is still terribly embroiled in severe institutional gaps-process, policy, capacity, performance and resources-that tell us that we have actually made tremendous effort at turning the civil service system around, but we still have a long way to go in terms of making that system a world class institution delivering quality service to Nigerians.
The extent of the reformability of the civil service system, especially in its Nigerian context, has to do essentially with the capacity the system has to overcome the execution trap in the development pathway. It has been noted with a special reference to Africa that only 29% of reforms ever got completed; 45% of on-going reform projects are rated unsatisfactory; and 26% of these reforms usually get cancelled. The reform execution trap therefore speaks to the unfortunate fact of excessively conceiving reform ideas without translating those ideas into demonstrable outcomes that we call qualitative and efficient service delivery.
In Nigeria, the implementation trap is acutely demonstrated by two critical institutional deficiencies. The first concerns our inability to connect the intention of reform with the environment within which that reform intent would be implemented. More often than not, an unfriendly environment will always undermine a good reform. One immediate way to read this deficiency is to see it as a kind of disconnect in designs between governance, policy and administrative operations. The second institutional deficiency manifests as the passion for reform without the knowledge of what it takes to successfully manage a reform process. The third relates to the scope and contents of reform that are sufficient to create desirable multiplier effect and systemic impact. The three examples if correlated will demonstrate this deficiency-the failure to recognise that public administration systems have theoretical underpinnings and the inability to derive reform solutions from action research.
These systemic deficiencies are so formidable that we are driven, once again, to re-examine our initial question: In the light of these historical outlines, is the Nigerian civil service irreformable? The answer to these questions is double-edged. A positive answer will derive from the qualitative levels of reform that has been generated by the democratic framework since 1990. We can identify the SERVICOM as veritable concept still requiring oxygen to come alive; IPPIS, GFMIS and the NHIS reforms as valiant attempts to remould our institutional platforms for the ongoing challenge of democratic governance in Nigeria. Indeed, every Head of Service at the Federal level has made spirited attempt to add value with the framework set between 2003 – 2009, while a significant, albeit incomplete, move towards performance orientation has been made with the Tenure Policy in 2009. Subsequent move to deepen the institutionalization of the performance-oriented business model still remains largely aspirational.
With the benefit of hindsight, therefore, we can look through the perspective of history at the trajectory of continuously improving reform insights and strategies that had been put in place. The critical point here is that without the framework of successive reforms from pre-independence till date, our present reflections on administrative reforms in a democratic context would have become stunted.
The Nigerian civil service has really come a long way since its inauguration in 1954. Thus, in terms of the consistency and critical insights generated by the reform efforts so far, the NCS is definitely reformable. Laozi, the Chinese philosopher, said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a step. In the Nigerian civil service, several reform steps have been taken. What is left is for us to know whether the direction the reforms are taking is exactly where we want to go.
The question of whether or not the Nigerian civil service is reformable, we have so far argued, should not be taken as a rhetorical or provocative question. Rather, it is one which is entirely diagnostic in the same manner in which philosophers’ treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness. We made the point that since reform is so critical to the idea of democratic governance which is constantly evolving to capture the needs and aspirations of the citizens, the question of reform is not one that can be settled once and for all. Rather, the real issue is that of constantly reflecting on how to reform right and in a manner that a system will not continue revisiting the same reform issue for ages.
If we grant the fact that past reforms till date have generated crucial insights and strategies that suffice to say the NCS is reformable, then we should be concerned with whether those insights are sufficient to take us to our objectives. In this regard, we should urgently ask the next question: Has the Nigerian civil service been reforming since 1974? Of course, a sub-question would immediately be: Why is 1974 significant in Nigeria’s administrative reform history? The irreformability of the civil service system, in this context, will therefore be the function of those insights which have been generated but which we have consistently neglected for several reasons. As such, Nigeria is still far from the objective of a world class public service institution that will drive the business of government and provide efficient and effective service delivery for Nigerians. The worry therefore is: For how long can we keep on reforming without arriving at the objective? Will the transformation of the civil service system happen soon? Or, is the system essentially irreformable?
The quality of reforms that have been initiated (especially with evidences of successful efforts of some agencies and state civil services) so far invalidates the presumption that reform is impossible in the NCS. Yet, that does not allay the pervasive fear that if we fail to undermine the execution trap we outlined in the first part, reforming the NCS may become so protracted that we can as well conclude that the system is irreformable. And this brings us back to the question of 1974. It is significant because it was the year that Nigerian civil servants suddenly came into enormous wealth as a result of the stupendous wage award associated with the Udoji reform implementation. That Commission therefore became a negative administrative watershed in terms of what could have happened to the NCS.
The Udoji Commission was preceded by the Adebo Commission of 1971. This commission was set up to investigate the stubborn issue of remuneration that first surfaced in the attempt to pay the expatriates and Nigerians in the civil service. However, the commission’s terms of reference was overtaken by the encroaching and far deeper challenge of managerialism that was fast becoming the revolution in administrative practice. The commission recommended that unless the far weightier issue of organisation and structure were first settled, that of wage and compensation would become essentially trivial and unenlightening. It therefore recommended the establishment of a different commission with expanded terms of reference. The Udoji Commission was the result.
When the commission began sitting, its job was already cut out for it by the Fulton Report of 1968. That commission in Britain had a very similar responsibility: it was set up at a time when the British civil service was already too bureaucratic to make any success of its many reform efforts. Fulton therefore became the framework for giving birth to the managerial culture in public administration. The Udoji Commission dug deep into the intent of the Fulton Report to advocate the need for a total reassessment of the Nigerian Civil Service and its capacity to internalise global changes. It not only recommended the institution of a performance management framework backstopped with project management praxis, but it also advocated the enlistment of new professionals that would be compatible with the new global knowledge dynamics that is defining global best practices.
Unfortunately, like the Fulton Report itself, the Udoji Report was disarticulated. Its implementation was a disjointed one that selectively executed the compensation package while neglecting the real substance of the recommendations. The Udoji reform is just one in line of other relevant reform programmes-Phillips reform of 1988 and the Ayida Review Panel of 1995-that were either not properly implemented or implemented in an unreflective manner. All these reform reports contain deep administrative blueprints for a continuous reappraisal of the NCS. While they are not perfect reports, their recommendations could have been genuinely modified and intelligently refined to purge them of the conception-reality gaps that could have hindered their implementation.
Thus, while we can talk of some ‘pockets of reform effectiveness’ in the reform of the NCS since 2003, the significant points are that (a) we ought to have gone beyond this juncture a long time ago given the dedication and visionary analysis that went into our reform efforts since 1971; and (b) it is still not too late to put in place a serious and collective framework for deepening and consolidating the insights derived from them through a rigorous impact assessment rooted in a critical reappraisal of the MDAs. This approach essentially confronts the idea of reform as a systemic one that transfer our focus to the MDAs as the locus of government business. This immediately implies that what is being reformed-what all the reform assessments from 1974 has been demanding-is an urgent change in the MDAs’ business model which ought to have been transformed through active debureaucratisation.
‘The aim of leadership,’ according to Edward Deming, ‘should be to improve the performance of man and machine, to improve quality, to increase output, and simultaneously to bring pride of workmanship to people.’ Reforming the MDAs is confronting them at the level of performance and critically injecting the insights of past reforms to re-engineer their service delivery capacity. This requires not only boldness on the part of the reformers, but also careful sensitivity as to what lessons to learn and unlearn from the diagnosis and recommendations of past reforms. My study of the history of reform commissions and recommendations outlines several issues which are crucial for the task of recalibrating the business model of the MDAs.
First, there is the recurrent issue of competitive remuneration. Unfortunately, this issue has been part of our reform experience without any significant way forward. Without a competitive pay system, the idea of performance cannot even be confronted. The same applies to the second issue of the current workforce composition and size characterised by redundancy, administrative in-breeding, skills and competency deficit as well as a very low organisational IQ. This implies that when the NCS attracts people, we necessarily do not attract the right kind of talents. Working for government now in Nigeria is the passport to all manners of laxity and indifference. It is even worse because we have an uncharacteristic large number of people doing practically nothing where we could have an ingenious HR framework that employs the best and remunerate them accordingly based on performance.
The third critical issue concerns a subsisting adversarial framework of industrial relations which seems antithetical to the objective of a fast, smart, intelligent and lean public service that can deliver service on the go. A viable and developmental industrial relations framework therefore becomes critical because of its direct connection with an urgent national productivity paradigm that could drive the public service performance dynamics. All these would also be coupled with a deep budget reform of macro-aggregate public financing to free recurrent budget essentially for development purposes.
– Dr.Olaopa, is Permanent Secretary Federal Ministry of Communication Technology
Abuja. Nigeria. tunji.olaopa@ commtech.gov.ng
