The Nation Newspaper

Tag: civil service

  • Civil service reform, not rocket science: Avoiding mistakes of past reform

    Civil service reform, not rocket science: Avoiding mistakes of past reform

    • By Tunji Olaopa

    Institutional reform advocacy is essentially about critical optimism in the face of significant institutional dysfunction. To be an institutional reformer and not be an optimist is, for me, a contradiction in terms. Optimism is what keeps sustaining the belief of the reformer in the possibility of transformation. Without such a belief, the reformer has no business in the space of institutional reform. This is the optimism that I have developed over time, after I made up my mind to dedicate myself to researching the historical and administrative dynamics that led to the institutional dysfunction of the Nigeria public service system.

    This same optimistic realism has sustained me through various government succession since the Babangida administration. And it is a similar but even more potent optimistic assessment of what is realistically possible that I am bringing to my assessment of the Tinubu administration and its emerging determination to succeed at all cost. Despite the legitimacy and credibility contestations swirling around the administration at the moment but which the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) has happily put behind us, there is no doubt that the Tinubu presidency is aware of its historical mandate as a critical juncture in the bid to better the lots of Nigerians. And so, given the direction of its policy maneuvers so far, and in spite of the many concessions to realpolitik, I am assured that a most significant game-changing dynamic, more potent and with a great chance of succeeding than I have witnessed since 1979, might be unfolding. Of course, there are many policy areas that the government is still apparently struggling to make sense of, but I am encouraged by the administration’s open-mindedness and humility in searching for directions to take.

    We cannot however make the mistake of taking the success of this government for granted as a foregone conclusion. Development success, from the many lessons of history, requires hard work in many directions and at many levels. And one thing that the new administration has going for it, as a guiding landmark, are the many glaring mistakes of the past which ought to serve as the basis for continuous learning and strategic framework moderated by critical success factors that must be injected into the government thinking. One fundamental critical factor necessary for determining national transformation, which the administration itself has decisively put a finger on, is the reform of the civil service.

    The bureaucracy is a necessary complement to the administrative success of any government. Indeed, it is fundamentally central to the functionality of democratic governance. It would however be most presumptuous for me to argue that a government cannot succeed without the civil service that is capability ready (even though it already has a bureaucracy that is stuck in its own complexities). Of course, this concession derives from a fringe literature that any government that depends on the variability of the civil service for its policy direction has already failed before even taking off.   One strategy that many governments have taken on, since the 1980s, involved setting up parallel structures that allowed them to sidestep the focused and often onerous task of reforming the bureaucracy.

    This goes against the grain of those historical examples of resolute government interventions that took seriously the task of reprofiling and reforming their civil service. We can easily recall the decision that earn Margaret Thatcher the moniker of the “Iron Lady”: the uncompromising resolve to reform the British civil service and undermine the adversarial labour relation that was holding Britain back. We cannot also forget the role that the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) played in post-war Japan and her resolve to overcome her economic deficit and regain her leadership in global affairs. Back home, the old western region and the Awolowo-Adebo administrative model, as well as the unparalleled success of Gowon’s super permanent secretaries, signal how paying attention to the reform of the civil service can give the lie to neglecting it. Indeed, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the head of government of the old western region, gave a glowing tribute to the civil service of the region and its capability readiness, under Chief Simeon Adebo, to implement the policy imperatives of the Action Group (AG). 

    And yet, many successive Nigerian governments, since independence, have also taken the unproductive direction of sidetracking civil service. And this could explain why, in a sense, the system has been characterized by over-bloatedness. After all, most of the personnel of the parallel structures that government set up end up getting offloaded into the service.

    This is both the theoretical and administrative background that set the tone for the direction in which the Tinubu administration must situate its civil service reform framework. To even be able to jumpstart its resolute determination to hinge the success of the administration on a reform of the capability readiness of the civil service, the government needs to first pose to itself and answer three fundamental questions that lies at the heart of institutional reform in Nigeria. The first question concerns the nature and dynamics of government business: what needs to change in the way the business of government has been conducted so far in order to transform its efficiency through change management dynamic that enables it to deliver the government’s development agenda? The second question has to do with the temporal shelf life of the administration: how does the administration manage what it can realistically achieve in the period of four years that will enable its 8-Point Agenda to effectively manage a democratic service delivery to Nigerians? And the last question is procedural: which of the MDAs are critical to delivering the policy expectations contained in the 8-Point Agenda and, as a corollary, which governmental procedures and processes have the negative capacity of hindering the positive unraveling of the government’s development agenda?

    These three critical questions are motivated by the axiom that Nigeria cannot expect any fundamental transformation if we keep following the logic of governance and institutional reform that have failed to yield any cogent results in the past. And, as we hinted earlier, the Tinubu administration does not need, in any way, to reinvent the wheels in answering these three questions. It has at its disposals not only the institutional errors and false steps of the past sixty-three years, but also many significant and heavily researched policy, governance and administrative documents that detailed critical reform issues since 2001. A critical example suffices. Specific researches have outlined the critical issues involved in the fundamental dynamics undermining the conduct of government business. These include, among others: (a) transforming the current outmoded input-process that underlie the business model to include an output-outcomes result framework; (b) undermining the skill and competency gaps; (c) achieving clarity on actions required to execute plans, sectoral activities and departmental/unit programs; (d) putting in place an adequate performance monitoring and reporting system; (e) removing the existing organizational silos mentality and the culture of hindering policy execution; and (f) adequately defining a framework of rewards and sanction.

    Read Also: Lagos Civil Service Commission conducts annual career week

    These initial questions only prepare the Tinubu government for confronting the big issues involved in really summoning the political will to tackle the complexity of reforming the civil service. And the first really crucial point to note is that it will be somewhat counterproductive to take on the reform of the civil service in the mold as confronting the fuel subsidy removal or the policy dealing with the multiple exchange rates for the naira. One good reason is that the present fiscal challenge Nigeria is currently undergoing will not make that reform policy strategy a good one. In other words, institutional reform and its implementation complexities are too expensive to be taken on in one fell swoop. Nigeria’s current fiscal travails cannot handle it at all. Reform methodology specifies the critical policy choices that governments make in determining the framing of the reform strategy in terms of program design and the change management strategies.

    One of such policy choices involves determining whether reform methodology to adopt will slide in favor of comprehensiveness or selectivity. Taking on a comprehensive—root and branch—systemic reform, in the mode of the National Strategy for Public Service Reform (NSPSR) document of 2007 (which is the framework for reform implementation actions to date), should strictly be avoided by the Tinubu administration. One immediately obvious reason for this is that since institutional reforms take time to sufficiently gestate for results, the time frame they need to come to fruition does not adequately align with the four-year tenure of most administrations. This is one of the fundamental reasons past reform efforts failed to make huge impacts in the lives of Nigerians. And, for this administration, this reason is equally in tandem with the earlier argument that Nigeria’s fiscal condition forbids a comprehensive reform methodology.

    The reform wisdom in this case therefore insist, as a matter of administrative and governance imperative, that rather than going all in—especially as counseled by existing reform documents which quite unfortunately are largely process oriented—it is more strategic to adopt a mix of reform selectivity, more competent phasing and sequencing protocols as well as a significantly creative change management dynamics. Within the confine of a really smart and globally compliant change management protocols, modernizing the public service and making it capability ready for backstopping the developmental state Nigeria wants to be, entails committing the government’s political will to achieve the following:

    •basic housekeeping changes;

    •getting the basics of reform sufficiently right;

    •implementing system-wide performance improvement programme; and

    •implementing deep-seated systemic and structural changes usually through a mix of restructuring, reengineering and culture change, ostensibly for paradigm shifting from the bureaucratic to performance-rooted neo-Weberian model underpinned by a mix of the entrepreneurial and technocratic which benchmark protocols like the ISO 9000 world-class rebranding as one of its value propositions.

    Let us then assume, for the sake of pushing forward our line of argument, that the Tinubu administration will adopt the methodology of reform selectivity in moving forward its 8-Point Agenda for transforming the Nigerian economy, and in a critical sense, therefore, making a strategic decision to deliberately choose the battles it can fight and win, then there is a specific and time-tested direction for a reform action plan. Two dimensions of this action plan are strategic and should be immediate. The first one is that, given the urgent need for the symbolic significance of signaling governance achievement on the psyche of Nigerians, and hence the need for low-hanging fruits, the Tinubu government will be wise to adopt the method of phasing its reform programme, starting with those that will enable the rewiring of the institutional IQ of the civil service system, as well as rehabilitate its capability readiness to be able to adequately provide the support the administration badly requires to succeed. Again, in tandem with the earlier warning about reform comprehensiveness, there are too many damning creative and systemic destabilization that the labour unions will resists and which will keep bogging the administration down.

    It will also be a huge and strategic policy move for the administration to prioritize its attention not simultaneously on all public service institutions. Rather, a few MDAs must be targeted and situated at the forefront of the governance and administrative reform.

    These will include in the first category (a) those institution with the capabilities to deliver jobs and create wealth, (b) those saddled with the mandate of maintaining peace and security, and (c) those implementing national priority programs. In the second category will be institutions that regulate rules-based market players, investment, SMEs and the rule of law. And in the third category are the set of institutions that facilitates welfare-oriented social impact, services and human capital development. Here, the public-private partnership becomes very critical as a capacity enhancement strategy the government must factor into the performance mode of its institutions.

    With the immeasurable technical support that the NESG is providing to government at the moment, reinforcement provided by a carefully accredited consortium within a programme management front office (PMO) framework will also be a good short-term arrangement. This should come on after MDAs capability review has been undertaken to develop a targeted performance improvement plan which should be implemented with every urgency to enable the government to competently implement its development agenda. This can then further be complemented by the setting up of an expert-led Service Delivery Unit in the Presidency, if it is not already in place. The Unit will be responsible for facilitating MDAs in planning their service delivery programmes and for handholding in the focusing of citizens demand side of their service charter that leverages carefully designed SERVICOM instruments and frameworks. The Unit will also create platforms for MDAs’ peer review to enable sharing, learning and benchmarking.

    The second urgent action plan the government needs to take seriously in rejigging the capacity of the system is to thoughtfully, systematically and humanely purge the service of redundancies through the offloading of the chaffs to expand the grains. This is to be able to achieve, one, a significant reduction of personnel cost, two, to enable reinvestment of the efficiency savings as enhanced pay and incentives that could attract and retain talents to the service, and three, to significantly save the cost accruing from the system’s virtual dependence on the technical support provided by policy experts, consultancy firms, and development agencies which will always be required but now reprofiled within a win-win logic.

    But one needs to sound a note of warning here so that the new administration will not also fall into the same tradition of benchmarking policy failures around downsizing and rightsizing curated by the institutional traps and conditionalities of the World Bank and the IMF. And this is even all the more that the government has commenced a wide-ranging forensic audit of the civil service that is meant to achieve two-sided cost of governance objective. One, to determine the credibility of current payroll databases and validate staff numbers; and two, detect fraud that is being perpetuated in the payment procedures. What should be added is the correlative audit of staff numbers that targets the terrible phenomenon of redundancies which has a huge role to play in cost of governance containment. And, also important, in establishing staff number as part of the audit of the payroll. And this must be done in a way as to also account for, for instance, the ratio of doctors, policemen, teachers, and other professionals to the population within framework of global benchmarks.

    Downsizing and rightsizing cannot be taken for granted; even given the noble objective of cost containment it wants to achieve. It takes some delicate and sensitive policy intelligence not to allow a good corrective exercise to fall headlong into the usual reform trap that emasculate previous administration and undermine their governance achievements. There are several things to note and issues to consider in order to make a success of rightsizing. The first is that the government must never make the mistake of making the bloated service strictly an issue of the size of the wage bill. It is a complex issue that also concerns deeper issues like reassessing the role of the state in developmental matter (for instance, making it more regulatory rather than that of the sole provider of services) and the strategic distribution of human resources within the system. One should also not forget that the size of the service might equally be the function of the degree of centralization of the function assigned solely to the federal government which overlooks the significance of constitutional devolution, as well as how past policies have not been able to achieve statutory deregulation that could aid efficiency.   

    But then, the issue of the wage bill also has a fundamental impact on the optimal functionality of the public service. But the real issue must be to consider any policy on reducing the public sector wage bill in line with how such a policy will weigh on a comparable framework with other sectors and other contexts. This is critical because the government has a significant competitor in the private sector, as well as other countries’ wage dynamics. The implication therefore is not just that the government’s wage bill is large, but that the government needs to focus on achieving a compensation package that is competitive, affordable, attractive and effectively link incentive and pay with performance. The Tinubu government must therefore take seriously, in fashioning a wage and compensation package, the Hertzberg 2-factor theory that hygiene and motivation are crucial to achieving employee satisfaction and performance for productivity. Hygiene results from salary and incentives, while motivation derives from recognition in the workplace and how conducive the workplace is in every sense reinforcing to professionalism.  

    Ultimately, the government must never lose sight of the fundamental objective of achieving cost containment through rationalization, and that is the emergence of a smaller, flexible and efficient civil service that is not only re-professionalized but also possesses the adequate size and skill-competency composition that effectively and efficiently backstops government function at an optimal level required for democratic governance and service delivery. Such a new bureaucracy must also be concerned with restoring merit as the basis for reconfiguring a competency-based HR practices and dynamics. This speaks in tandem with President Tinubu’s affirmation of the need for a government of national competence that can then cascade down to the gatekeeping needed by the public service to be filled with competent professionals who can be trusted to make policies work for democratic governance.

    All the above is not rocket science. Institutional reforms have been carried out successfully all across the world, and they are often the difference between a state that is developmental and the one that is not. What ensures that difference is not the dearth of reform ideas, processes, procedures, paradigms and strategies which are available on a global basis, waiting to be efficiently adopted and adapted. On the contrary, a state sets itself on the path of economic progress and infrastructural development when its leadership summons the political will to push reform agenda through its entire messy implementation trajectory to its logical end. This is what could make the Tinubu administration truly transformational. And this is exactly where my reform optimism lies. 

  • Civil service reform, not rocket science: Avoiding mistakes of past reforms

    Civil service reform, not rocket science: Avoiding mistakes of past reforms

    • By Tunji Olaopa

    Institutional reform advocacy is essentially about critical optimism in the face of significant institutional dysfunction. To be an institutional reformer and not be an optimist is, for me, a contradiction in terms. Optimism is what keeps sustaining the belief of the reformer in the possibility of transformation. Without such a belief, the reformer has no business in the space of institutional reform. This is the optimism that I have developed over time, after I made up my mind to dedicate myself to researching the historical and administrative dynamics that led to the institutional dysfunction of the Nigeria public service system.

    This same optimistic realism has sustained me through various government succession since the Babangida administration. And it is a similar but even more potent optimistic assessment of what is realistically possible that I am bringing to my assessment of the Tinubu administration and its emerging determination to succeed at all cost. Despite the legitimacy and credibility contestations swirling around the administration at the moment but which the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) has happily put behind us, there is no doubt that the Tinubu presidency is aware of its historical mandate as a critical juncture in the bid to better the lots of Nigerians. And so, given the direction of its policy maneuvers so far, and in spite of the many concessions to realpolitik, I am assured that a most significant game-changing dynamic, more potent and with a great chance of succeeding than I have witnessed since 1979, might be unfolding. Of course, there are many policy areas that the government is still apparently struggling to make sense of, but I am encouraged by the administration’s open-mindedness and humility in searching for directions to take.

    We cannot however make the mistake of taking the success of this government for granted as a foregone conclusion. Development success, from the many lessons of history, requires hard work in many directions and at many levels. And one thing that the new administration has going for it, as a guiding landmark, are the many glaring mistakes of the past which ought to serve as the basis for continuous learning and strategic framework moderated by critical success factors that must be injected into the government thinking. One fundamental critical factor necessary for determining national transformation, which the administration itself has decisively put a finger on, is the reform of the civil service.

    The bureaucracy is a necessary complement to the administrative success of any government. Indeed, it is fundamentally central to the functionality of democratic governance. It would however be most presumptuous for me to argue that a government cannot succeed without the civil service that is capability ready (even though it already has a bureaucracy that is stuck in its own complexities). Of course, this concession derives from a fringe literature that any government that depends on the variability of the civil service for its policy direction has already failed before even taking off.   One strategy that many governments have taken on, since the 1980s, involved setting up parallel structures that allowed them to sidestep the focused and often onerous task of reforming the bureaucracy.

    This goes against the grain of those historical examples of resolute government interventions that took seriously the task of reprofiling and reforming their civil service. We can easily recall the decision that earn Margaret Thatcher the moniker of the “Iron Lady”: the uncompromising resolve to reform the British civil service and undermine the adversarial labour relation that was holding Britain back. We cannot also forget the role that the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) played in post-war Japan and her resolve to overcome her economic deficit and regain her leadership in global affairs. Back home, the old western region and the Awolowo-Adebo administrative model, as well as the unparalleled success of Gowon’s super permanent secretaries, signal how paying attention to the reform of the civil service can give the lie to neglecting it. Indeed, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the head of government of the old western region, gave a glowing tribute to the civil service of the region and its capability readiness, under Chief Simeon Adebo, to implement the policy imperatives of the Action Group (AG). 

    And yet, many successive Nigerian governments, since independence, have also taken the unproductive direction of sidetracking civil service. And this could explain why, in a sense, the system has been characterized by over-bloatedness. After all, most of the personnel of the parallel structures that government set up end up getting offloaded into the service.

    This is both the theoretical and administrative background that set the tone for the direction in which the Tinubu administration must situate its civil service reform framework. To even be able to jumpstart its resolute determination to hinge the success of the administration on a reform of the capability readiness of the civil service, the government needs to first pose to itself and answer three fundamental questions that lies at the heart of institutional reform in Nigeria. The first question concerns the nature and dynamics of government business: what needs to change in the way the business of government has been conducted so far in order to transform its efficiency through change management dynamic that enables it to deliver the government’s development agenda? The second question has to do with the temporal shelf life of the administration: how does the administration manage what it can realistically achieve in the period of four years that will enable its 8-Point Agenda to effectively manage a democratic service delivery to Nigerians? And the last question is procedural: which of the MDAs are critical to delivering the policy expectations contained in the 8-Point Agenda and, as a corollary, which governmental procedures and processes have the negative capacity of hindering the positive unraveling of the government’s development agenda?

    These three critical questions are motivated by the axiom that Nigeria cannot expect any fundamental transformation if we keep following the logic of governance and institutional reform that have failed to yield any cogent results in the past. And, as we hinted earlier, the Tinubu administration does not need, in any way, to reinvent the wheels in answering these three questions. It has at its disposals not only the institutional errors and false steps of the past sixty-three years, but also many significant and heavily researched policy, governance and administrative documents that detailed critical reform issues since 2001. A critical example suffices. Specific researches have outlined the critical issues involved in the fundamental dynamics undermining the conduct of government business. These include, among others: (a) transforming the current outmoded input-process that underlie the business model to include an output-outcomes result framework; (b) undermining the skill and competency gaps; (c) achieving clarity on actions required to execute plans, sectoral activities and departmental/unit programs; (d) putting in place an adequate performance monitoring and reporting system; (e) removing the existing organizational silos mentality and the culture of hindering policy execution; and (f) adequately defining a framework of rewards and sanction.

    These initial questions only prepare the Tinubu government for confronting the big issues involved in really summoning the political will to tackle the complexity of reforming the civil service. And the first really crucial point to note is that it will be somewhat counterproductive to take on the reform of the civil service in the mold as confronting the fuel subsidy removal or the policy dealing with the multiple exchange rates for the naira. One good reason is that the present fiscal challenge Nigeria is currently undergoing will not make that reform policy strategy a good one. In other words, institutional reform and its implementation complexities are too expensive to be taken on in one fell swoop. Nigeria’s current fiscal travails cannot handle it at all. Reform methodology specifies the critical policy choices that governments make in determining the framing of the reform strategy in terms of program design and the change management strategies.

    One of such policy choices involves determining whether reform methodology to adopt will slide in favor of comprehensiveness or selectivity. Taking on a comprehensive-root and branch-systemic reform, in the mode of the National Strategy for Public Service Reform (NSPSR) document of 2007 (which is the framework for reform implementation actions to date), should strictly be avoided by the Tinubu administration. One immediately obvious reason for this is that since institutional reforms take time to sufficiently gestate for results, the time frame they need to come to fruition does not adequately align with the four-year tenure of most administrations. This is one of the fundamental reasons past reform efforts failed to make huge impacts in the lives of Nigerians. And, for this administration, this reason is equally in tandem with the earlier argument that Nigeria’s fiscal condition forbids a comprehensive reform methodology.

    The reform wisdom in this case therefore insist, as a matter of administrative and governance imperative, that rather than going all in-especially as counseled by existing reform documents which quite unfortunately are largely process oriented-it is more strategic to adopt a mix of reform selectivity, more competent phasing and sequencing protocols as well as a significantly creative change management dynamics. Within the confine of a really smart and globally compliant change management protocols, modernizing the public service and making it capability ready for backstopping the developmental state Nigeria wants to be, entails committing the government’s political will to achieve the following:

     basic housekeeping changes; getting the basics of reform sufficiently right; implementing system-wide performance improvement programme; and implementing deep-seated systemic and structural changes usually through a mix of restructuring, reengineering and culture change, ostensibly for paradigm shifting from the bureaucratic to performance-rooted neo-Weberian model underpinned by a mix of the entrepreneurial and technocratic which benchmark protocols like the ISO 9000 world-class rebranding as one of its value propositions.

    Let us then assume, for the sake of pushing forward our line of argument, that the Tinubu administration will adopt the methodology of reform selectivity in moving forward its 8-Point Agenda for transforming the Nigerian economy, and in a critical sense, therefore, making a strategic decision to deliberately choose the battles it can fight and win, then there is a specific and time-tested direction for a reform action plan. Two dimensions of this action plan are strategic and should be immediate. The first one is that, given the urgent need for the symbolic significance of signaling governance achievement on the psyche of Nigerians, and hence the need for low-hanging fruits, the Tinubu government will be wise to adopt the method of phasing its reform programme, starting with those that will enable the rewiring of the institutional IQ of the civil service system, as well as rehabilitate its capability readiness to be able to adequately provide the support the administration badly requires to succeed. Again, in tandem with the earlier warning about reform comprehensiveness, there are too many damning creative and systemic destabilization that the labour unions will resists and which will keep bogging the administration down.

    It will also be a huge and strategic policy move for the administration to prioritize its attention not simultaneously on all public service institutions. Rather, a few MDAs must be targeted and situated at the forefront of the governance and administrative reform. These will include in the first category (a) those institution with the capabilities to deliver jobs and create wealth, (b) those saddled with the mandate of maintaining peace and security, and (c) those implementing national priority programs. In the second category will be institutions that regulate rules-based market players, investment, SMEs and the rule of law. And in the third category are the set of institutions that facilitates welfare-oriented social impact, services and human capital development. Here, the public-private partnership becomes very critical as a capacity enhancement strategy the government must factor into the performance mode of its institutions.

    With the immeasurable technical support that the NESG is providing to government at the moment, reinforcement provided by a carefully accredited consortium within a programme management front office (PMO) framework will also be a good short-term arrangement. This should come on after MDAs capability review has been undertaken to develop a targeted performance improvement plan which should be implemented with every urgency to enable the government to competently implement its development agenda. This can then further be complemented by the setting up of an expert-led Service Delivery Unit in the Presidency, if it is not already in place. The Unit will be responsible for facilitating MDAs in planning their service delivery programmes and for handholding in the focusing of citizens demand side of their service charter that leverages carefully designed SERVICOM instruments and frameworks. The Unit will also create platforms for MDAs’ peer review to enable sharing, learning and benchmarking.

    The second urgent action plan the government needs to take seriously in rejigging the capacity of the system is to thoughtfully, systematically and humanely purge the service of redundancies through the offloading of the chaffs to expand the grains. This is to be able to achieve, one, a significant reduction of personnel cost, two, to enable reinvestment of the efficiency savings as enhanced pay and incentives that could attract and retain talents to the service, and three, to significantly save the cost accruing from the system’s virtual dependence on the technical support provided by policy experts, consultancy firms, and development agencies which will always be required but now reprofiled within a win-win logic.

    But one needs to sound a note of warning here so that the new administration will not also fall into the same tradition of benchmarking policy failures around downsizing and rightsizing curated by the institutional traps and conditionalities of the World Bank and the IMF. And this is even all the more that the government has commenced a wide-ranging forensic audit of the civil service that is meant to achieve two-sided cost of governance objective. One, to determine the credibility of current payroll databases and validate staff numbers; and two, detect fraud that is being perpetuated in the payment procedures. What should be added is the correlative audit of staff numbers that targets the terrible phenomenon of redundancies which has a huge role to play in cost of governance containment. And, also important, in establishing staff number as part of the audit of the payroll. And this must be done in a way as to also account for, for instance, the ratio of doctors, policemen, teachers, and other professionals to the population within framework of global benchmarks.

    Downsizing and rightsizing cannot be taken for granted; even given the noble objective of cost containment it wants to achieve. It takes some delicate and sensitive policy intelligence not to allow a good corrective exercise to fall headlong into the usual reform trap that emasculate previous administration and undermine their governance achievements. There are several things to note and issues to consider in order to make a success of rightsizing. The first is that the government must never make the mistake of making the bloated service strictly an issue of the size of the wage bill. It is a complex issue that also concerns deeper issues like reassessing the role of the state in developmental matter (for instance, making it more regulatory rather than that of the sole provider of services) and the strategic distribution of human resources within the system. One should also not forget that the size of the service might equally be the function of the degree of centralization of the function assigned solely to the federal government which overlooks the significance of constitutional devolution, as well as how past policies have not been able to achieve statutory deregulation that could aid efficiency.   

    But then, the issue of the wage bill also has a fundamental impact on the optimal functionality of the public service. But the real issue must be to consider any policy on reducing the public sector wage bill in line with how such a policy will weigh on a comparable framework with other sectors and other contexts. This is critical because the government has a significant competitor in the private sector, as well as other countries’ wage dynamics. The implication therefore is not just that the government’s wage bill is large, but that the government needs to focus on achieving a compensation package that is competitive, affordable, attractive and effectively link incentive and pay with performance. The Tinubu government must therefore take seriously, in fashioning a wage and compensation package, the Hertzberg 2-factor theory that hygiene and motivation are crucial to achieving employee satisfaction and performance for productivity. Hygiene results from salary and incentives, while motivation derives from recognition in the workplace and how conducive the workplace is in every sense reinforcing to professionalism.  

    Ultimately, the government must never lose sight of the fundamental objective of achieving cost containment through rationalization, and that is the emergence of a smaller, flexible and efficient civil service that is not only re-professionalized but also possesses the adequate size and skill-competency composition that effectively and efficiently backstops government function at an optimal level required for democratic governance and service delivery. Such a new bureaucracy must also be concerned with restoring merit as the basis for reconfiguring a competency-based HR practices and dynamics. This speaks in tandem with President Tinubu’s affirmation of the need for a government of national competence that can then cascade down to the gatekeeping needed by the public service to be filled with competent professionals who can be trusted to make policies work for democratic governance.

    All the above is not rocket science. Institutional reforms have been carried out successfully all across the world, and they are often the difference between a state that is developmental and the one that is not. What ensures that difference is not the dearth of reform ideas, processes, procedures, paradigms and strategies which are available on a global basis, waiting to be efficiently adopted and adapted. On the contrary, a state sets itself on the path of economic progress and infrastructural development when its leadership summons the political will to push reform agenda through its entire messy implementation trajectory to its logical end. This is what could make the Tinubu administration truly transformational. And this is exactly where my reform optimism lies.   

  • Boosting federal civil service delivery

    For two days last week in Abuja, senior civil servants in the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation, among others were trained on innovation to boost their service delivery. EMEKA UGWUANYI reports

    For two days, senior civil servants in the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation (OHCSF) had their skills honed, courtesy of the Oil Producers Trade Section (OPTS) of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), conjunction with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

    The training on Radical Innovation held in Abuja for 80 senior civil servants across the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).

    The Acting Head of Service, Dr. Folashade Yemi-Esan, said the training was aimed at developing a more innovative civil service for improved service delivery via dedicated innovation units.

    She recalled that one of the eight priority areas in the 2017 to 2020 Federal Civil Service Strategy and Implementation Plan (FCSSIP) is to drive innovation in the service.

    She said the Head of Service Project Management Team on Innovation was embarking on the establishment of a Service Innovation Department and Service Innovation Units in all the MDAs, as well as an innovation campaign to raise awareness on Innovation in the public sector.

    She thanked the OPTS for supporting the implementation of the programme, which she described as the “first of its kind in the Nigerian public sector”.

    OPTS Chairman, Mr. Paul McGrath, commended the OHCSF for the  civil service reform aimed at better performance and improved service delivery.

    McGrath, represented at the event by Mr. Lorenzo Fiorillo, the Vice Chairman of OPTS, said OPTS members, were delighted by the OHCSF for upgrading the horizon of civil servants in technology.

    He said: “We are delighted to identify with the leadership and staff of the Federal Civil Service in this effort to build a modern public service and to support OHSCF in the provision of a world-class training programme as part of the activities under the Federal Civil Service Strategy and Implementation Plan (FCSSIP) 2017-2020.

    “I trust that this training, delivered by one of the world’s leading training institutions, will go a long way in supporting the OHSCF in achieving her aspirations to become an organisation that provides world-class service for sustainable national development.”

    The OPTS chairman called for efforts to create a vibrant oil and gas industry by ensuring the security of lives and property, maintaining stable laws and policies, respecting contract sanctity and fair mechanisms for timely dispute resolution, developing sustainable local capacity and removing structural factors that increase costs.

    The training was facilitated by Prof. Sanjay Sarma, Vice President, Opening Learning and Prof. Bhaskar Pant, Executive Director, Professional Education of the MIT.

    Pant said the training was the first professional programme being held in Africa, under the MIT Africa Initiative, which seeks to be engaged in the development of universities as well as the public and private sectors in Africa.

    The training culminated in an innovation conference held at the NationalUniversities Commission Auditorium, Abuja. It was attended by directors and permanent secretaries across the MDAs.

  • As DG/CEO of NSRMEA bows out of civil service

    Sixty-year-old Hajia Rabi Umar Sodangi, the former Acting Director General and Chief Executive Officer of the National Steel Raw Materials Exploration Agency (NSRMEA is a staunch Muslim. A leadership and management expert and former Chairman, Northwest Zone of the Nigerian Institute of Management (NIM). Sodangi is largely regarded as an embodiment of integrity and hardworking officer of the state. Recently, she retired from active civil service.

    At  the age of 60, Rabi Umar Sodangi is confident to say all her life dreams have been fulfilled.

    Until her retirement  Sodangi, had so much on her plate to contend with.

    With career obligations—as the acting DG/CEO of NSRMEA, the Federal Government agency that is responsible for mineral discovery, exploration and the regulation of the mining and steel subsector of the country—on one hand, and her development advocacy and activism—, Almannar Women Association—on the other hand, Sodangi at a that time had no choice but to combine these overwhelming tasks.

    These are besides the indispensable duties of a wife, mother, grandmother and role model that she is to her family and many others.

    Surprisingly however, she did deliver excellently and even surpassed expectations on all fronts!

    For instance, two and half years after her appointment by President Muhammadu Buhari as the acting DG/CEO of NSRMEA, Sodangi did not only prove herself as a truly certified and capable manager, she did practically transform the agency into a more effective and profitable organization for the government.

    According to records, the giant strides recorded by NSRMEA, under Sodangi’s watch, include the successful execution of 22 mineral exploration projects in various parts of the country; recovering of all the confiscated and abandoned equipment belonging to the agency; acquisition of many heavy duty machines, project vehicles, laboratory and survey state of the art equipment; engaging the Mining Cadastre Office to cover all our areas of exploration; creation of the IT/GIS centre, including well equipped e-library.

    During her tenure, the agency also put up a temporary core shade to store all core samples that were in the past being destroyed; and most importantly she had a harmonious and peaceful working atmosphere regardless of ‘a few saboteurs.’.

    Her  leadership at National Steel Raw Materials Exploration Agency was fun and largely successful despite the challenges from the professionals who felt and fought that she should not be the CEO because she was not a geoscientist.

    Unfortunately to the doubting Thomases, Sodangi actually achieved a lot more than the geoscientists because of her managerial and leadership expertise.

    Previously, Sodangi had served as a Director of Finance and Human Resources Management of the agency, with additional task of  coordinating and monitoring projects.

    That was why she had an edge over past CEOs because of her  technical experience as well as leadership skills.

    Having joined the agency in 2003 as a Level 14 officer, the young and dedicated officer steadfastly grew through the ranks to become a Director in 2010.

    Her conspicuous integrity personae attracted other management positions alongside her official portfolio as the head of a directorate. They include Secretary for top management meetings, Board Secretary, Reform Implementation Committee Secretary etc.

    Because she was always with the top management staff, this gave her a lot of exposures and experience in exploration, an advantage she would explore maximally in the course of her reign.

    Because of her passion, she was able to change certain things, like the issues of failed projects and seizures of agency equipment by clients.

    “I wanted the Agency to have all necessary equipment and must be functional. I wanted the Agency to have a robust IT/GIS centre like the one I saw at a Mineral exploration company in India.  And I did achieve all my goals,” she omce said in an interview.

    Part of the Sodangi’s goal was to make the agency profitable. And within the time spent, she did hit that goal too, turning into the government cover, a sum of N80million, generated through outsourcing of key managerial functions.

    Given her professional track records and dedication to duty, Sondagi’s personality would soon thereafter attract another leadership assignment, now from the nation’s foremost management institution, the Nigerian Institute of Management (NIM).

    Initially, she was elected the Chairman, Kaduna branch, where she won the overall best performing chairman. Thereafter, she was elevated with bigger duty of Chairman, Northwest Zone, superintending Kano, Kaduna and Sokoto states among others.

    Repeating same outstanding performance she exhibited at NSRMEA, Sodangi’s tenure in NIM was also characterised by unprecedented achievements.

    Before her ascension, NIM Kaduna branch’s, bank account was dormant for many years until she became the chairman.  The office used to be in a shanty area but she moved it to Ali Akilu road (an uptown area).

    Also, many chapters in the North West were not active, she reactivated them and conducted elections in Katsina, Kano and Sokoto. The association also had annual NIM summits consecutively for the period she was Northe Westt Zonal Chair.

    Born February 10, 1959 in Katsina State, this elegantly beautiful woman has an impenetrable affinity with the poor and vulnerable youths, especially the young women of the Northern extraction, investing in their education and economic emancipation.

    She has been pursuing this passion, through her non-for-profit organisation, Almannar Women Association (AMWA), an organisation founded 13 years ago by a group of Northern elite women, primarily with the duty to turn the tide in favour of every poor and vulnerable Hausa woman and girl child.

    In administering this objective, Sodangi, as the organisation’s President. has directly rescued, economically rehabilitated and reintegrated as many as 15,000 lives touched by insurgency, abject poverty and or victims/sufferers of HIV/AIDS, through its various restoration and rebuilding initiatives.

    This figure is said to be besides the 1,500/2000 beneficiaries that have been attending the group’s Annual Ramadan Lectures since three years; where and leadership scholars engage teeming youths on moral rectitude and other socio-contemporary issues such as parenting/child upbringing, character formation, marriage counselling, conflict resolution, financial management at home, business in Islam, benefits of fasting, roles of spouses in the family, among others.

    Almanar Women Association is an NGO, registered with CAC in 2010 and also registered as a multipurpose cooperative in Kaduna state since 2006.

    Since inception, AMWA has played a major role in the transformation of women, girls and OVCs from a life of destitution and degradation to dignity and self-reliance.

    The group realised that women empowerment is critical to the achievement of MDGs 1to 6. When women are empowered they take care of themselves and their children in terms of feeding, education, healthcare as well as moral development.

    AMWA has so far economically rehabilitated more than 15,000 people through its various initiatives such as skills acquisition, grants for petty trading, various types of counselling such psycho social, health, marriage, peaceful coexistence as well as seminars and workshops on moral issues and entrepreneurship.

    It has four centres in Kaduna ie AMWA HOUSE at Kwaru, Rigasa community centre, Rafin guza and Kabalan doki.  These are areas where you find mostly the less privileged.

    AMWA is also planning, to build a Women Development Centre.  Sodangi is a certified trainee of Senior Executive Leadership and Management training on Disruptive Management and Good Leadership, a strategic growth administrative tool organized by the Alliance Manchester Business School, in conjunction with the Nigerian Institute of Management.

    The Sexagenarian is a holder of Master’s Degree In Business Administration (MBA), 2005/2006 at the Bayero University; Higher National Diploma In Hotel Management from Kaduna Polytechnic between 1976 – 1981.

    She had a Postgraduate Diploma In Management (PGDM) between 1997/1998 at the Bayero University, Kano State; Diploma Certificate in Computer Science from the Federal College Of Education, Okene  between 1999/2000; and a Postgraduate Diploma In  Education (PGDE), 2000/2001 at Kaduna Polytechnic.

    She did her Senior Secondary School at Queen Amina College, Kaduna and bagged a colorful West African School Certificate, after a stint between 1972-1976. She was awarded as one  graduating students.

     

    • Bankole Shakirudeen Adeshina, a public affairs commentator sent this piece from Lagos.

  • Fed Govt decries deficiencies in civil service

    The Head of Civil Service of the Federation (HoCSF), Mrs. Winifred Oyo-Ita, has decried the deficits in human capital building and development in the Civil Service, saying there is need for correction.

    She spoke in Abuja at the opening  of a training programme on Protocol Procedures for Official and Public Functions.

    Oyo-Ita, represented by the Director, Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), in her office, Mrs Anne Attah, said the training was organised to educate participants on Protocol Procedure for Official Functions and to learn best practices in image making.

    Seventy participants across the Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) attended the training as the pilot batch.

    “At the bedrock of implementing the Federal Civil Service Strategy and Implementation Plan is the issue of capacity building as human capital is the greatest resource the country has, even above oil. The civil service over the years has been faced with capacity deficit and I am afraid it may get worse if the challenge was not diligently tackled.

    ”As protocol officers you are also the image makers of the service and country. A little slip in protocol application and etiquette can become a monumental national embarrassment.

    ”As the popular maxim goes: ‘If you don’t train them, don’t blame them.’ I am happy the process of discharging our own part by delivering training has started with this batch,” she said.

    She warned the participants to make the best use of t mhe training as they would be held accountable for any slip after the programme.

    NOLKIN Consulting Executive Director,  Ambassador Akin Oyateru, said the training was aimed at restoring the lost glory in protocol procedure.

    Oyateru, who facilitated the training, added that over the years, some deficiencies had been noticed in protocol practice hence the need to bridge that gap.

    ”Protocol was an essential image making tool and a mechanism through which an organisation was presented to the world and trainings were the hall mark of any successful civil service,” he said.

    In a related event, the new Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC), Dr. Tukur Bello Ingawa and 12 new commissioners have assumed duty in Abuja.

    He took over from Dr. Chimaobi Odunze, the commissioner in charge of Imo and Abia states, who had been acting after the expiration of the tenure of Deaconess Ayo Joan.

    Ingawa promised a lasting legacy.

    According to him, he promote to make the commission a better place. He called for the cooperation of every one to enable him succeed.

    The Deputy Director, Press and Public Relations of the commission, Dr Joel Oruche, stated in a statement, that the new chairman was accompanied to the office by some retired Permanent Secretaries of Ingawa.

  • Aregbesola: civil service must re-engineer itself

    Osun State Governor Rauf Aregbesola has urged the nation’s civil servants to be diligent, efficient, productive and steadfast in the discharge of their constitutional responsibilities.

    The governor noted that for Nigeria to reclaim its rightful position in the comity of nations, there is need for overhauling the nation’s civil service.

    He said as government’s engine room, the civil service must re-engineer itself, reinvigorate its performance and take the lead in repositioning Nigeria by ensuring a humane, civilised, people-oriented society.

    Aregbesola spoke at Atlantis Civic Centre in Osogbo, the state capital, at the official presentation and launching of a book, titled: The Civil Service As A Cornerstone of Development in the State of Osun: The First 25 Years, written by the state’s Association of Retired Heads of Service and Permanent Secretaries.

    The governor harped on productivity in all strata of life, particularly in the civil service, as the path to national growth and development.

    He regretted that Nigeria was stagnant due to its unproductive people.

    Aregbesola said: “Our productivity as a people is the lowest in everything in the world, and we are not concerned about this critical challenge that has placed us far behind in the scheme of things in the world.

    “It is disheartening that we have forgotten the fundamental basis of our existence, which is to render services that will bring about the required results through productivity.

    “Since the civil service is the engine room that determines the success of government, no civil servant must be found wanting at championing productivity and efficiency to justify whatever he or she earns as income.

    “So, it is time for us to champion things that will enhance our level of production in all sectors of the economy and declare to the world that we are not destined to be poor and wretched.

    “Henceforth, no civil servant must be at peace if he or she sees refuse on the roadside; no civil servant must also be at peace when things are not in order in his or her domain.”

    The guest lecturer, Prof Ladipo Adamolekun, called for a vibrant, virile, effective, efficient and productive civic service.

    Adamelekun, who described the civil service as a critical integral organ of government, said the growing of a country can only be realised with the building of a first-class civil service.

    He said: “We have to build, rebuild, transform and make our civil service progress as a world-class institution. This could only be realised through our collective consciousness to show the need for it.

    “The civil service must be strong to continue to build on the fundamental objectives of government for all-round growth and development. This can be easily actualised through training and retraining, introduction of technology that will enhance capacity building and raise the level of manpower in the system as being done in Osun through the introduction of E-learning computer tablet of knowledge, popularly called Opon Imo.”

     

     

     

  • ‘It’s time to reinvent civil service’

    Stakeholders, scholars, researchers, policymakers and students of government and politics have sounded a note of warning to the government at all levels that for the Nigerian civil service to change from being a conduit pipe for draining public resources, there is the need for public service managers to discard old skills and acquire 21st century competencies that make them at par with the private sector in terms of investment in the workforce and achieving result.

    The clarion call was made at the launch of Lead City University/Ibadan School of Government and Public Policy (LCU-ISGPP) graduate programmes in public administration and public policy, held at the ISGPP Seminar hall, Awolowo Way, Bodija, Ibadan. In their various remarks, speakers including, the Founder and Director, Centre for Values in Leadership, Professor Pat Utomi; Chairman, ISGPP, Professor Akin Mabogunje; Professor Gabriel Moti of the Department of Public Administration, University of Abuja, stressed the need for the states and federal government to constantly re-train the competences of their public service managers to match the pace of development in the world.

    Noting the dynamism of public systems across the world, Utomi, who chaired the event, emphasized that public service managers must be quick to respond to competitiveness by collaborating, shaping culture and setting standards. Mabogunje, on his part, said capacity building and reorientation was imperative for public sector managers for them to be more focused on attaining service objectives.

    Delivering the First Distinguished Lecture entitled, “Governance Competencies in the 21st Century: Birthing the New Age Nigerian Public Manager”, Moti, the guest lecturer called for a new co-equal relationship between civil society, public sector and private sector to improve public administration. To improve public sector performance, Moti prayed for a redesign of the curriculum for training public service managers to adopt cutting-edge management skills.

    In his remarks, Pro-Chancellor, Lead City University, Ibadan, Professor Jide Owoeye described the partnership that birthed the joint graduate programme as a collaboration between the town and gown that will help both institutions move forward.Similarly, Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki in a keynote speech urged the ruling class to realise their role in clearing the rot in public administration system, build institutions, and provide competitive remuneration that will motivate workers to work efficiently.

  • Retired Osun senior public servants to improve civil service

    Retired senior civil servants in Osun State have offered themselves for further service.

    They expressed worry about what they called declining and poor quality of service delivery in the public sector.

    The retired civil servants noted that though this was not peculiar to Osun State alone, their voluntary service to the state would enable it re-invent the civil service.

    The retired officers, under the aegis of Association of Retired Heads of Service and Permanent Secretaries in Osun State, addressed reporters at the weekend in Osogbo, the state capital, ahead of public presentation and launch of a book.

    The association’s chairman, Chief Moses Inaolaji Aboaba, said the retired officials were ready to re-invent the civil service to enable it regain its lost glory and move close to what it was in the defunct Western Region.

    He urged the state government to partner the association, saying though “we might have exited the civil service, we are vibrant and can still be of assistance to any sitting government in the state”.

    Aboaba added: “Instead of using consultants, who are not familiar with the system, we would support the government with our wealth of experience. The civil service is our constituency and we are concerned about its development-oriented role.”

    According to him, among the reasons for the compilation, editing, publishing and presentation of a book, titled: The Civil Service as a Cornerstone for Development in The State of Osun – The First 25 Years, is to launch an aggressive but non-violent campaign for efficient and effective service delivery by public servants.

    He regretted the “intense politicization of civil service in Nigeria,” blaming the development on successive military administrations in power.

    Aboaba said: “Militant incursion into politics has done so much damage to the civil service. During the Murtala/Obasanjo military era, the civil servants, who had been working with contentment and dedication, were suddenly thrown out of service. It became worse with the Gen. Ibrahim Babangida regime, which turned the permanent secretaries into political positions by calling each of them a director-general.

    “Some of these situations have whittled down the role of the civil service as an agent of social change and transformation. So, its role as a front desk in the functioning of government’s civil service must be re-invented to claim its lost glory.”

    The chairman said the book would be presented to the public and launched on Thursday, June 21, at Atlatis Civic Centre on Ring Road in Osogbo with Governor Rauf Aregbesola expected at the event.

    He said the occasion would be chaired by Prof Olu Aina while the book will be reviewed by Prof Mayowa Oladoyin.

    The Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Eniitan Ogunwusi, is expected to be the royal father of the day.

    Past military and civilian governors in the state and their deputies are invited to the programme as well as civil servants from Level 12 are to be led incumbent Head of Service to the event.

  • NATE hails Buhari for scrapping HND, BSC disparity in civil service

    The Nigerian Association of Technologists in Engineering (NATE) has commended President Muhammadu Buhari for scrapping the disparity that exists between HND and BSC graduates in the Federal Civil Service.

    The scrapping of the dichotomy was announced through a circular from the office of the Head of Service of the Federation, Winifred Oyo-Ita and dated 26th March, 2018.

    National President (NATE), Ahmed Yabagi, who briefed reporters on Saturday in Abuja, said with the decision, engineering graduates of Polytechnics could now move above the level 14 to 17 in the civil service and even aspire to be Permanent Secretaries.

    He said NATE had already setup a committee to ensure that all states implement the decision taken by the Federal Government.

    Mr. Yabagi disclosed that three states – Kwara, Katsina and Kano had already scrapped the dichotomy in its civil service by making sure that engineering graduates of Polytechnics and universities are placed on equal level in the civil service.

    He said: “The removal of dichotomy between HND and BSC holders in engineering is one of the laudable achievements of this administration. This monster called dichotomy has been threatening the technological development of our great nation for a long time.

    “But with the change mantra of President Buhari administration, the issue of discrimination between the graduates of engineering profession in the civil service, polytechnics and the universities is finally put to rest by the release of the enable circular from the office of the Head of Service of the Federation dated 26th March, 2018.

    “At this stage the entire graduates and students of polytechnics in Nigeria, particularly engineering graduates wish to doff their hat for Mr. President, a man of integrity, a man with listening ears. Indeed we have seen change in his administration and we shall reciprocate this gesture by contributing our quota in the technological development of our country.

    “NATE is in support of the technological development and ready to partner with government’s vision and mission bequeathing entrepreneurial skills to Nigerian youths which is the only means to turn the economy around.

    “Some states have already started its implementation. All state chairmen of the association will be given a circular to take to their states Head of Service for implementation. Three states have already removed the dichotomy. They are Kwara, Kano and Katsina.”

     

  • Ogun govt to employ 5,000 graduates into civil service

    The Ogun State government has said it will employ 5,000 candidates, comprising of new applicants looking for jobs and other sub-cadres seeking upgrading in the state civil service.

    The candidates sat for the first phase of this year’s Public Service Examination, conducted by the Administrative Staff College of Nigeria (ASCON).

    The commissioner in the State Civil Service Commission, Alhaji Surajudeen Olusesi, spoke during the examination at the former Moshood Abiola Polytechnic, Ojere, Abeokuta, the state capital

    Olusesi said the examination was an entrance point for those seeking appointments into the civil service.

    The commissioner said applicants for the examination cut across various cadres, adding that the successful ones would occupy vacant positions earlier indicated by the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in the state civil service.

    He hailed Governor Ibikunle Amosun’s administration for fulfilling the All Progressives Congress (APC) campaign promise to provide jobs for qualified graduates.

    Olusesi noted that a good number of graduates had been engaged on yearly basis since the inception of the present administration in 2011.

    He said: “We must hail the present administration for fulfilling its campaign promises of providing jobs for the teeming youths in the state, despite the unfriendly economic situation in the country. We know that some states are owing their workers salary. Here in Ogun State, we are not owing; rather, we are employing more hands.”

    Also, the Civil Service Commission’s Permanent Secretary Mrs. Ajibola Chokor said the examination was meant to screen the candidates to get the best and most outstanding ones to fill vacancies in the civil service.