Civil servants have been fingered in most, if not all, cases of stealing in Ministries, Department and Agencies of government. The Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission, Joan Ayo, in this interview with our correspondents, VINCENT IKUOMOLA and FRANCA OCHIGBO, describes the situation as an abnormality which the commission is set to correct.
There are reports that appointments go on in the ministries without recourse to the Federal Civil Service Commission
Let me first explain the issue of regularisation. Since I got in as the chairman of the commission, we started advertising vacancies for appointments, appointment is the same as what you call recruitment but we call it appointment because that is how it is spelt out in the constitution. Now, hitherto, if there was no advertisement, the positions would just be filled. But for transparency and meritocracy, I started advertising. But we can only advertise when vacancies are declared and brought here because the civil service commission does not create vacancies. The vacancies are declared and forwarded through the office of the Head of Service with a waver forwarded from the ministries, the parastatals are not under us. But for those ones we can speak for, we advertise. Initially, it used to be in newspapers but now we are building our own web portal which we now use for recruitment. Recruitment is now online as far as this commission is concerned. This is a major step we have taken, so we process only and then we interview personally. Now after we have interviewed and some people are selected, they are issued temporary letters of appointment. With that letter, they either report to office of Head of Service or straight to their ministries. With that temporary appointment, they document them; that is when they go through their certificates again with them to check their qualifications. After six months, the names of the candidates are forwarded back to us for regularisation. Regularisation simply means they have been documented and accepted.
The level of corruption in the service today is alarming; does this not bother the commission?
Only this last week I have had to deal with serious cases involving level 15 and above. We handed twenty-two to law enforcement agents, we’ve had to send three away from the service, just within these few weeks and some have gone in the process of answering query and all that. That is just at that level, and we have sent back this information to office of head of service for further investigation so we can follow the procedure.
Just as you have crimes all over the country, so we have offences here too and that’s why I told you that the civil service is a reflection of its society. So, I hope you now understand what is meant by regularisation; it is all part of the process of checks and balances in the way we absorb people into the service. The MDAs had to cope with the increasing responsibility of the service, and because of this increase in responsibility they have the opportunity to absorb more youths into the service and then of course we also have what we call waver for disadvantaged states. You know I’ve told you that even during recruitments some states have high scores, some have very low scores without compromising merit. You have to accept that because if your own best is 70, then that’s your best; if your best is 60 that’s your best, in life we are all not of the same height.
Is there any benchmark?
There is always a benchmark based on each state, there is always a benchmark based on each recruitment exercise. Like JAMB, each exam differs in its own cut off point, so there can’t be a static measurement or benchmark. So, when we have this disadvantage, the one I have been involved with has to do with two states including the Federal Capital. We had taken the waiver before I got here, the waiver was conveyed by the president through the office of head of service to us and governors of the states concerned were involved in the exercise. The presidential waiver was to bring directors to fill the quota for some disadvantaged states. As at the time I came in as Chairman, there was discrimination in transfer within the service. I had to step in to ensure meritocracy and political neutrality. I insisted that all the candidates be interviewed and the best from different senatorial districts were picked in line with the federal character principles.
But the perception out there is that there is still serious imperfection in the system.
I can speak for myself. For me to have risen to the level of a director, the first set of directors in the service with decree 43 in 1988, for me to have become a permanent secretary and to have left without blemish by the grace of God. For me to have come back in 1999 to serve two presidents as a senior special assistant on economic matters without any blemish and for me to have risen to this level, excuse me it’s too late in the day for me to spoil this name. The only thing I have to my credit is my good name; the only thing I have given to my children is my good name. I am not going to spoil my name because I want to recruit somebody. I accepted this job because I felt that I needed to plough back to the society what the society has put in me. I have gone on courses all over the world as a civil servant. I want to see people behave the way I used to behave as a civil servant. I want to tell them what it means to be a civil servant and it is my effort in telling them that they are feeling inconvenient. Like I said, within the past four months, three officers at that level have left or are in the process of leaving the service because of the fraud they have been involved in. They don’t support the continuity of what we are doing.
Comparing what was obtainable then and what we have now in the service, where did we miss it?
Let me say this, we have lost the core values of the civil or public service and these core values are what we want to re-enact or re-enforce. When you see a soldier, you know who a soldier is. He greets you good morning even if its 2pm, that is part of their unwritten tradition. The civil service has its unwritten tradition also and it has its own formal tradition and we imbibed these core values on the job. Yes, you may have your own natural tendency to be polite, to have been brought up in some good families; but then the moment you come into the civil service the core values mould and sharpen you to the extent that you now comport yourself as a civil servant.
What are these core values?
Meritocracy; this is the first one. Our founding fathers, when they negotiated our independence during the constitutional conferences between 1952 and 1960, adopted for meritocracy and political neutrality as the first basic core value to shape what we call the public service then. The civil servant was only seen not heard. Impartiality, regardless of your tribe, your race, your ethnic background, your religion; once you are on this job, you must be impartial, accountable and transparent.
Talking about IPPIS, there is the rumour that the system is compromised, which has led to names of some people who are not workers on the federal government payroll
Since we started doing the capturing here, we have not had that. Before now, it was not done here, but since it was brought here and became part of the IPPIS committee, we have insisted that it must be put here because we have their files and that is the check and balances that we have brought into all this. Many things used to happen in the past, but with what we have put in place, it is not possible. If we have ICT integrated public service, it will cut down drastically on fraud in any form.
There is this argument that the waiver favours some region above others, and is also being abused..
No, there are two sets of presidential wavers that I met on ground. The first one originated from the office of Head of Civil Service of the Federation. It was a memo sent to Mr. President, I think between 2010 and 2011 just to provide jobs for our teeming youths. They expanded the work force in the service, they expanded each ministry to be able to accommodate more intake giving the new role each ministry was to play because over the years the roles of the departments have expanded. So, based on that, the then president approved what they called 984 presidential waver for 2011, 2012, 2013. By the time we got here in 2012, they had done the first set, they were on the second set because it was supposed to last for three years at that stage. It was something that was on-going.
Integrity crisis is one of the issues currently confronting the service, and many people would rather refer to them as “evil servants” for lots of reasons.
I never liked to hear these, because civil service is my only constituency and I accepted this job because integrity has to do with character. In fact, I was given this job, I’m sorry if I am being personal, but for that reason we have come to the system based on the integrity, the character that we have imbibed. Let me say this, every nation deserves the civil service it has because the civil service is a product of that society, but when you come in here we start imbibing in you the core values that I first mentioned and that is what has taken so long for everybody to imbibe because somewhere along the line these core values were dropped.
You asked me a question about how it happened. In the history of the civil service, I trace it back to the military era, when the public service commission was degraded by the then government of the day and since then the standard started falling because before now the public service commission was the epitome of service excellence. They were highly segregated and protected from the society, but then one government came and said the public service commission was too powerful and that very day, without any recourse to rules and regulations, it was dissolved and then it was the issue of things falling apart and the centre could no longer hold. The then chief justice of the federation, who tried to advise the then government that it was not in line with the constitution for the public service commission to be sent packing even without any reason, was sacked and then the constitution was suspended. Not only that, there was a massive purge of the public service.
The procedure in the service is that before anybody is sent packing, he or she must be given a fair trial or hearing. How do we do that in the service? You issue a query, but during the purge nobody was given this opportunity to explain; the whole thing was just done. But before this happened, the civil servant were so committed to the job because he had this sense of security on the job. But because it happened like an aberration, something that has never happened before, public servants now started saying that their job was no longer secure.
Has the commission disciplined any officer in recent time?
Several, I cannot list them. You know, they come from all the ministries; we discipline every day. But let me tell you the procedure for discipline. For grade levels 03 – 7 it is the junior staff committee within the ministry that handles that, while from 08-14 it is the senior staff committee that will handle that, and like I said the procedure is the same. The committees issue query and their recommendations are subsequently forwarded to the federal civil service commission and then we sit to decide whether they are fair or not because in everything we also maintain fairness and equity. Sometimes, we even increase the level of punishment far above the recommended disciplinary measure and sometimes we say no, that is too much for this offence, while sometimes and in most cases we concur.
For staff investigated by the ICPC or EFCC, do you wait for the case to be concluded before disciplinary measures are carried out?
No, immediately such happens they are suspended; they are issued query and suspended and once they are established they are handed over to the police for prosecution and we don’t interfere with that.
There are always huge crowd gathered in front of FCSC during recruitment exercise. Are there no better ways the exercise could be carried out?
That used to be, but now because of the efforts we have made, they now apply online. These are the measures we have put in place based on integrity. You cannot come here when there is an advertisement and say you want any form. When I got here, applicants in their numbers used to besiege the commission for forms and this encouraged fraud. In fact, the first one we did before we put the website in place, we found some people selling forms on the roadside and when they were nabbed by the police they confessed that it was printed at Oluwole in Mushin, Lagos. So it is all part of the product of our society. We have managed now to remove forms from advertisement, we tell you our website to fill online and we process online and you can see how quiet this place is, and if you see people coming in and out now, they may be people coming in for IPPIS.
What about the use of transfers to bring in cronies to the service?
When we came on board, we discussed that transfer, proper placement and conversion were abused. As a result, circulars were issued placing transfer on hold until situation was normalised while proper placement and conversion were completely abolished. This was done to address the frustration being faced by civil servants, especially as it affects promotion.
What about the alleged absorption of political office holders into the federal civil service?
No former aide of the former president, vice president, ministers or any key political appointee has been absorbed into the Federal Civil Service as being alleged in some quarters. Recall that in 2011, a presidential committee, under the chairmanship of Alhaji Adamu Fika, was set up, in which the Chairman of the Commission (FCSC) was a member. The committee recommended that anybody who has occupied a political position will not be absorbed into civil service. However, where a career civil servant is seconded to work in the office of a political appointee, he/she is allowed to come back to office because he has gone to serve as a career civil servant. There are extant circulars to this effect. Those making these allegations are challenged to name such persons and their ministries.
