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Tag: struggles

  • Understanding secession struggles

    Understanding secession struggles

    A crucial premise of the world political order is that it is normatively justified. Otherwise, it makes little sense to defend an unjust system with the might of the state and the international community. Secessionists challenge this premise.

    A system, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder. For secessionists, what they see in the states whose legitimacy they challenge does not measure up to their standard of justice. Hence the grave decision to confront a vicious Leviathan even when doing so risks a certain danger of deadly civil war, and an uncertain outcome that includes ignoble defeat.

    Surely, in this, as in other spheres of activities, the advice to keep trying until you succeed at your chosen task is a sound one. One cannot justifiably blame a group that persists against all odds based on the perceived justice of its cause. The commitment of politically aware and morally concerned activists in pursuit of their dream of a just ordering of the world political order is worth paying attention to.

    Therefore, today, I choose to look at three such efforts out of a plethora of cases that have emerged in recent times. The focus of each group with its justification for its position and the reaction of its larger political community, a.k.a. the state, provides a powerful insight not only to the sociology of the different states, but also their normative credentials.

    Scotland has been an integral part of the United Kingdom since 1707 when the Act of the Union ratified the treaty of 1706. The treaty had unified the kingdoms of England and Scotland under one Kingdom of Great Britain. Before then, there had been cultural and blood ties. James VI of Scotland who was the great grandson of James IV, King of Scotland, and Margaret Tudor, daughter of the King of England, became the acceptable successor to Elizabeth I, Queen of England.  That was around 1603 and the prospect for a common crown and a common parliament was bright.

    A common crown did not occur because of ingrained cultural differences and resentment. This was what the treaty of 1706 accomplished. Or did it? Even before the recent resurgence of nationalistic sentiment in Scotland, the treaty and act of unification were not a shoe-in but for the dire financial situation in which Scotland found itself. Ever since, the Union has only alienated many Scots, fuelling the demand for independence, a demand which Brexit has only just intensified.

    What has been the reaction of Westminster? With gentle persuasion, a strategy of divide and rule, and a dose of concessions, including devolution, the secession movement has been managed. In the 2014 referendum, 55 per cent voted against independence, while 44 per cent voted in favour. The Scottish National Party has now demanded another referendum vote over the decision of the English people to exit the EU. Time will tell.

    Significantly, government response does not include arrests, detention, or jail time for the leaders of the movement for Scottish independence.

    An unusual secessionist movement out of California in the United States just disappeared without the United States government lifting a finger. California and Texas, two of the biggest states that couldn’t be more disparate in outlook and political leaning, have shared a common interest in moving for secession whenever they do not like the result of a presidential election. Between 2008 and 2016, it was Texas that wanted an exit. Since January until this week, it is California.

    Based on its assets in population and financial muscle as the sixth-largest economy in the world, California can undeniably prosper as a nation-state. This plus the resentment of a federal government that is completely under the control of a conservative ideology which negates everything that many Californians espouse have driven the Golden State to the edge. Interestingly, the state itself is ideologically divided between the north and the south and as soon as it succeeds, if it does, California Republic will confront a new reality of assuaging a minority within the new nation.

    We may ask: what has been the reaction of the United States government to the threat of secession by one of its states? Silence!

    This is understandable. There is a constitutional provision for dealing with such cases. The movement leaders know they must cross a threshold. They must secure requisite signatures to place the initiative on the ballot. To organise signatures, they must raise funds. More than six months after they floated the idea, the California secessionists had not raised up to one quarter of what they need to put the question on the ballot for 2018. Amidst this, there was the bad press about the link of one of the leaders of the movement with Russia where he teaches English! The initiative was expectedly called off this week.

    Back home, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) declared a new Republic of Biafra a couple of years ago. This was after the election of 2015, but it was not altogether a completely new movement. Years earlier, the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) had taken the nation by storm. Both movements boast of massive support from Ndigbo, especially the young generation, and both Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and Chief Ralph Uwazuruike became instant celebrities.

    The reason for the support that the two gentlemen receive from youths and adults alike is not far-fetched. Biafra war-experience shocked the conscience of many people around the world mainly because of the effective propaganda machine of the seceding region. The troubling pictures of malnourished children, the famished figures of the elderly, and the account of genocidal activities against the Igbo before the secession move were too gruesome for many.

    But hostilities had ceased for more than 40 years and normalcy had been restored. Yet, emotions still run high and a new generation of Igbo, including many who were not born at the time of hostilities, now lead the new movement.

    Alas, the last paragraph is only half-true! Hostilities only ceased on the battle field. For many Igbo, there is still a feeling of alienation from the larger society. Though, they have participated at the highest levels of governance, including the presidency, they have only served as Number 2 while the Number 1 position has still eluded them. They feel short-changed in the allocation of states per zone. And with an impressive record of educational achievements, they feel that their potentials have not been and cannot be fully realised in the Nigerian landscape with its contradictions.

    Furthermore, it is also the case that the movement attracts, not just a new generation, but also the old and well-established political and intellectual figures. Only recently, the prestigious Eastern Consultative Assembly elected Mazi Kanu as its new President. If that is not an endorsement of his position by the Igbo establishment, what can qualify as such? The governors of the Southeast and the business and professional class have also called for Kanu’s release.

    This raises the question: what was the reason for Kanu’s detention in the first place? Per government, he led a movement for secession and this is a crime against the Nigerian state. But for Kanu, the legitimacy of the state is the issue.

    A further question is raised: Can this crisis be effectively resolved through the legal system or through a thoughtful process, which takes account of the political context in which the crime is committed and addresses the fundamental issues it raises?

    That was why Great Britain tried to deal with the Scottish movement with devolution before the English ventured again into Brexit crisis. On the other hand, the California and Texas movements are largely ignored by the government because they have no oxygen to sustain them.

    It is instructive to note that the Eastern Consultative Assembly has restated one more time the grievances that occasioned the agitation for secession. The group identified the perceived injustice of “oppressive census figures”, “asphyxiation through state and local government creation, and “opposition of the Nigerian government to peaceful restructuring.

    The implication is that once these grievances are addressed, the agitation will cease. Can we give political solution a chance?

     

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  • The pitfalls of self-determination struggles

    The pitfalls of self-determination struggles

    E jo laa ko; a kii ko ija” is, for the Yoruba, one of the fundamental principles of a good fight. Simply put, for a successful fight, the trick is not just to be a good fighter, but rather it is important to be adept in the art of stating one’s case effectively. If you are a lousy combatant but an eloquent narrator of events, you are likely to have the sympathy of the judge and jury. On the other hand, even when you are a good fighter but your recounting of the issues is defective, the risk of your losing the case is pretty high.

    All oppressed people have good cases in the court of world political opinion. But not all oppressed people have made a good impression on the world. Many factors are responsible for this, not least of which is that the world itself is a veritable centre of great injustice that has not always been moved by the plea of the oppressed for justice. But even when oppression is so morally outrageous that many are moved to help, the misfortune of the oppressed is that they play into the hands of the oppressor with the manner of their approach to the fight and with their poor narratives of the issues.

    The principle of self-determination was Clause 3 of the Atlantic Charter adopted at a meeting between the British Prime Minister and the United States President and issued by them in August 1941. It was the agreement that got the United States involved in the war of the greatest generation. The principle of self-determination may have been strategically invoked to assure subordinated groups that they too had something important, namely their freedom, to gain at the end of the war and with victory over the adversaries. But originally it wasn’t meant to apply to African colonies. Who were Africans, after all?

    Africans adopted the principle anyway, and vigorously and effectively deployed it to expose the inconsistency and duplicity of the allied powers. The 1945 Pan African Conference made it its focus and dispersed the conferees with the instruction to fight for their self-determination. It worked.

    The self-determination battles of the 1940s to 1960s could have finished the job by insisting on new boundaries for the new states. For pragmatic reasons, they did not because they didn’t want a delay in the granting of independence to their states by the European powers. The self whose determination was the object of the struggle turned out to be the colonial-imposed boundaries and independence from colonial rule was the goal.

    Within a decade of the achievement of the goal in respect of each of those “mere geographical” entities, it became obvious that it was a wrong self that the struggle succeeded in determining and it was clear even to the vision-impaired that the various nationalities which made up the multinational states that the colonisers left behind had been unfairly treated. This was especially the case with the cultural minorities.

    It was clear then that the goal achieved cannot serve the purpose of good governance and self-government. John Stuart Mill is right on target: “Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of the representative government, cannot exist.” In many cases, including ours, it is a truism.

    Yet, two factors have since made it almost impossible to reverse the action. First, the Organisation of African Unity insisted on the principle of non-interference with colonial-imposed boundaries even in cases where those impositions were clearly ridiculous and outrageous.

    Second, the new indigenous powers as beneficiaries of the hand-over from imperialists also saw themselves as keepers of a sacred trust which they were not willing to betray. Of course, the imperialists only retreated to the corner, effectively controlling events of their former colonies from the sideline. Therefore, the new leaders swore to keep their various countries united at all cost. In addition, there was the human fear of the unknown creeping to the subconscious of national leaders, preventing them from taking the bold steps their countries needed.

    Granted that the most extreme of those steps, namely complete separation and/or full-scale boundary redrawing may be traumatic and sometimes counter-productive. But there are less radical approaches, such as true federal or confederal arrangements.

    For the trauma of complete separation and full-scale boundary redrawing, we do not need to go beyond our national borders and reflect on the new struggle for the Republic of Biafra. Assume that it is a genuine struggle based on the fundamental principle of self-determination. Assume also that there is a hundred per cent support for the cause among all Igbo of the Southeast. The snag is this: what about the Igbo in the Northwest, Northeast, Northcentral and Southwest, not to talk of Southsouth? Do they return to the new Biafra? Do they stay put wherever they are and become aliens requiring visas and work permits? What about those in the civil service of other states and the federal? Or in the university system?

    Of course, these issues would have to be part of the details that a more comprehensive approach may need to work out if there is a consensus on a complete separation. But barring such a consensus, there is bound to be severe tension across the land even as we are now witnessing.

    A consensus is not out of the question, but it has eluded us for a long time especially since Aburi. Every now and then, a political crisis rocks the nation and one zone or region feels the pinch, cries foul and demands an out. But somehow the crisis is resolved and with it goes the demand. It happened in 1966, 1967, 1993, and now it appears that the cycle is being restarted by agitators for a new Biafra. What sparked this new agitation is anybody’s guess! Is it marginalisation or electoral shellacking?

    A genuine fight for self-determination doesn’t need to be supported by any defensive justification other than that self-determination is the birth-right of human beings and groups. And where a group was unfairly imposed upon by an external entity, leading to its involuntary incorporation into a larger entity with others, it must retain its right to pull out at any time, provided that all the parties impacted reach a mutually agreeable consensus on the terms of separation.

    A consensus is not impossible. And despite OAU and AU it has happened in Africa. It can happen again. But it cannot be unilaterally achieved by one nationality especially when that nationality has its tentacles spread throughout the nation space.

    A more rewarding approach is genuine negotiation that includes all nationalities. This was the object of the Congress of Nigerian Nationalities (CONN) which the late super patriot, Chief Anthony Enahoro, initiated and struggled to achieve in exile and later upon his return to the country. His demise left a vacuum in the struggle for reform and cultural democracy.

    Hopefully there is a Joshua in the land who will take the people to their desired destination. Let dialogue and negotiations begin in earnest. We know that there are nationalities that are not afraid to go it alone and are capable of standing on their own without encroaching on the space of others.

  • Reforming the Nigerian Civil Service: My struggles, my pain, my triumphs (V)

    The first brutal fact I confronted when I joined the civil service was its complex operational frameworks, and unfortunately its pathology. I came in when the Nigerian civil service had already imbibed, to the fullest possible extent, the disenabling bureaucratic culture. The complex operational dynamics of every civil service system all over the world had begun to overwhelm our own system, and like we said in the last part, the system itself was not prepared for the challenge of change. The rule of the officials had commenced, and to borrow the title of Michel Crozier’s book, the Nigerian Civil Service became a ‘bureaucratic phenomenon.’ As it became immediately obvious to me, as the bureaucratic complacency became entrenched, and the official procedures became multiplied, the citizens became more excluded from democratic transaction, and became more disenchanted.

    From the mid-70s, the Nigerian Civil Service had already got a bad name.

    We all have experienced the red tape at one time or the other-the clerk painting her fingers while people wait impatiently on the long queue; the official who complicates a simple matter of getting a license because he wants a bribe; moving from one office to the other trying to track a file; the annoying list is endless. Peter Enahoro, the veteran journalist, considers the civil servants as trapped within their own institution: ‘Civil servants are also a compromise between incivility and servitude. They are inherently uncivil and economically servile. The civil servant is underpaid, which makes his service equivalent to servitude. On the other hand, the civil servant takes a razor-sharp tongue to work with him and will snap like the jaws of a crocodile at the least provocation. Thus, while he is not civil, he is a servant. It is a rare compromise.’

    It took me a while before I would begin to understand that the public service has a deeper professional pedigree than what we today see all around us at federal and state secretariats all over the country. By the time I had embarked on the doctoral programme, it dawned on me that the public service is actually a vocation, a deep spiritual calling that requires a deep service to the public. Of course, this is difficult to accept within the contextual bastardisation which Enahoro referred to as ‘uncivil servitude.’ But the simple question that would bring enlightenment is: where did we derive the concept of ‘public service’ from? And why ‘public or civil service’?

    The civil service, which predates the idea of modern government, derives essentially from a vision of ensuring social order from an administrative coordination of human affairs. Since its beginning in the ancient Egyptian society, the public service has been perennially faced with the urgent need of confronting the complex task of managing public affairs through the ingenuity and creative acumen of a manager who understands the dynamics of management and how it can be directed in a manner that impacts positively on the citizens of a state. Those that were chosen to serve the pharaoh, a demi-god in ancient Egypt, were required to go through a special scribal education that was partly a lesson in administrative responsibility, partly an induction into patriotic enthusiasm, and partly a cultural enlightenment.

    I had to understand Plato and Weber to come to a full realization of what service as spirituality means. The first time I read Plato’s Republic, as a young secondary school boy, it struck me as a fundamental political manifesto. It was a philosophical reflection on how to tame political disorder in a state. But Plato had a higher intention if his Republic would be better than Athens. Plato was convinced that if a state must work to deliver the goods to its citizenry and maintain harmony, it must also be strongly fortified by a cadre of managers and experts who know what they are doing. Plato definitely had more intellectual resources and political complexity than the pharaohs. And, still smarting from the judicial murder of Socrates in the hands of public servants, Plato knew that the depth of philosophical diligence must be reached if the Republic must have a public service that is true to the most fundamental principles of the state. And he deployed educational, psychological, metaphysical and epistemological resources to ensure that.

    But it is to Max Weber that I must give the intellectual credit for the groundwork that reveals the public service as a vocation. With his theory of the modern bureaucracy, Weber outlined the specific relationship that ought to exist between the public servants and the government. His sociological legacy consists in giving us the template for what he called the ‘ideal-type’ bureaucracy which can serve as the rational basis by which ‘actual type’ bureaucracies, public or private, can be assessed for the rational attainment of the goals of the organisation.The idea of bureaucracy, for Weber, is based on the notion of legal-rational authority; an authority which employees recognise as legitimate. The framework of the legal-rational authority privileges written rules and procedures. Each position in the bureaucracy has its duties and rights, which are clearly defined; rules and procedures are laid down to determine how the given authority is to be exercised. Bureaucracy therefore promises a stable organisation, despite the fact that its incumbents come and go. Weber’s ideal-type bureaucracy emerged as neutral, hierarchically organised, precise, continuous, disciplined, strict, efficient, reliable and ultimately inevitable in contemporary society. The bureaucracy was to become technically the most efficient form of organisation. And in Weber’s sociological, Plato’s philosophical and the pharaoh’s cultural vision, the public service was to become a vocation.

    And the first condition for such a vocation is that the public servant must be apolitical in a manner that shields him or her from political patronage that could colour his or her administrative judgment. This is what Joseph Schumpeter meant when he remarked that ‘bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it.’ As history has shown, it is a very short step from administrative service to administrative dominance by officials. As vocation, the public service was to be a spiritual calling, a profession that would consume the affections of those committed to it. A profession becomes a calling or a vocation when it becomes integrated within an ethical framework and is therefore attached to larger vision and purpose beyond itself. It is in this sense that a bureaucrat is ‘called’ to serve the state and a purpose beyond him/herself.

    Beyond the rigid intellectual framework of my doctoral dissertation, I did not need to look to pharaonic Egypt, ancient Rome or 18th century Prussia to encounter those who are public servants par excellence-Nigeria had its own golden era of public service professionalism whose foundation was laid by die-hard public servants: Simeon Adebo, Jerome Udoji, Sule Katagum, S. O. Wey, Ali Akilu, Allison Ayida, Phillip Asiodu,  Ahmed Joda, Ime Ebong, Yetunde Ighodalo, Francesca Emanuel, Tejumade Alakija, Gray Longe, Shehu Musa, to name just a few. All these worked tirelessly to reproduce a functional and ethically responsible civil service in post-independence Nigeria. Chief Simeon Adebo’s service credential is all the more incredible because he had no special original calling into administration; he was a graduate of English! Yet, he came to a deep understanding of his vocation as more than just an employment. Adebo would definitely understand Abraham Maslow’s contention that ‘Duty cannot be contrasted with pleasure, nor work with play when duty is pleasure, when work is play, and the person doing his duty and being virtuous is simultaneously seeking his pleasure and being happy.’

    Unfortunately, these same professional civil servants who laid the foundation of what we now regard as the golden era of public service in Nigeria watched perplexed as the civil service they had built was overwhelmed by incipient bureaucratic pathology. Before their very eyes, their civil service was demoted from being one of the celebrated civil services in the Commonwealth to become an extremely degenerate structure that could no longer transform policies into infrastructural frameworks. It was this civil service that I made the decision to join in the late 80s, and that decision transformed my entire personal and professional lives.

  • Reforming the Nigerian Civil Service: My struggles, my pain, my triumphs (III)

    Confucius, the ancient Chinese philosopher, once gave a remarkable admonishment: ‘Study the past if you would define the future.’ And for Edmund Burke, once we take historical knowledge for granted, then we are doomed to repeat those terrible mistakes of the past. There is no better preface on the significance of historical insights into Nigeria’s administrative trajectory. History, any history for that matter, is not a list of boring stories of what had gone by. On the contrary, history is a rich tapestry of human actions and inaction, and the multiplicity of consequences that flows from them. Nigeria’s administrative history stems from the moment the Nigerian state came into its amalgamated existence in 1914.

    The history of Nigeria’s reform experiment becomes important once we see it as the ongoing attempt, in administrative terms, to come to term with the possibility of redeeming Nigeria from its postcolonial deficits. Amalgamation was motivated by colonial arithmetic; hence, it lacked any national consideration of progress. The need for administrative reform is therefore premised on the urgent necessity of transforming the civil service into an effective institution that would foreground the nation’s search for an infrastructural revolution that would alleviate the years of denigration Nigerians have suffered under colonial rule.

    Within the context of my doctoral investigation of the evolution of administrative reforms, the idea of a trajectory therefore becomes very critical. A trajectory, in this administrative context, becomes an intentional search for an omega-point that is represented by series of successful reform efforts, beginning from an alpha-point. While all the pre- and post-1954 reforms are significant in their own regard, especially in the calibration of what came to be known as the Nigerian Civil Service, the real nation-defining reform issues actually commenced in 1971 with the Adebo Commission. Like most of the others, the Adebo Commission was established to deal with some of the intended and unintended consequences of the Nigerianisation Policy, especially the wage issue.

    But the Adebo Commission soon became caught up in two bigger issues, internal and external. While still investigating its terms of reference, the first military coup had happened, and the decline of the civil service structure and organisation had commenced. The military government set in motion several critical factors that instigated the gradual evolution of a structural pattern that consistently whittled down the capacities the civil service has to promote good governance. Externally, the managerial revolution had already commenced, and the British Civil Service was already the focus of its demands through the Fulton Commission of 1968. Thus it was that the Adebo Commission began with a brief to investigate the wage and recruitment issues of the new civil service, but ended up with a more significant managerial challenge bordering on organisation and structure. The Adebo Commission recommended that another public service review commission; the Udoji Commission came into existence.

    The Udoji Commission, if I am asked, remains the singular most significant reform commission in Nigeria’s administrative history. It is the watershed of what could have gone right but went wrong with the civil service system in Nigeria. The significance of the Udoji Commission is simple but profound: it is the commission that had to mediate between the new managerialism that was defining the civil service system and the old Weberian tradition on which the Nigerian Civil Service was founded. In its Main Report, the Commission diagnosed the central problem of the Nigerian Civil Service as that of its inability to respond to serious change. When the Commission was in place, the NCS was already too bureaucratic to achieve the postcolonial objective of national development and democratic service delivery to Nigerians. Thus, fully inspired by the UK Fulton Report, the Udoji Commission went on to recommend, on the one hand, a new style public service infused with “new blood” working under a result-oriented management system operated by professionals and specialists in particular fields. And, on the one hand, it recommended standardization of conditions of service, increase in public sector wages, a unified and integrated administrative structure, the elimination of waste, and the removal of inefficient departments.

    Andrew Grove got it right: ‘When you’re caught in the turbulence of a strategic inflection point, the sad fact is that instinct and judgment are all you’ve got to guide you through.’ The Gowon administration missed the significance of the ‘strategic inflection point’ that the Udoji Report represented. Rather than Udoji becoming a template for the rejuvenation of the civil service system in Nigeria, it became a slogan for abundant wage. This was because the Federal Government decided to implement the wage component of the Udoji Report rather than the structural components. The turning point was therefore lost in the euphoria of wage increment. It seems to me that since Udoji, the civil service system in Nigeria has been attempting to reverse the mistake of 1975. Udoji casts a long shadow over the stagnation of the civil service.

    For instance, it is interesting to understand the dynamics of the next two significant reform attempts in Nigeria-the 1988 Civil Service Reform and the 1995 Ayida Public Service Review Panel. The Philips Commission Report, which generated the 1988 reform recommendation, was forced by inevitable global trajectory to revisit the managerial revolution in administration through its attempt to lay the foundation of a professionalised civil service. Professionalization was thus tied to specialization. Unfortunately, rather than professionalising, the reform entrenched a politicisation of the workforce, especially the status of the permanent secretary which became a political appointment. The conception of professionalism was also curious because it was taken as a function of the location and time span of an officer in a particular ministry. The Ayida Panel was supposed to act in a review capacity to interrogate the recommendations of the Philips commission as a means by which the system can be reinvented. But it took the logic of reinvention the wrong way-it reinvented the pre-1988 civil service system and its managerial deficit! The simple but sad implication of this is that the Ayida Panel did not have a concrete agenda of reinvention; so it recommended a regression back to the status quo ante.

    ‘Challenging the status quo,’ according to Gary Hamel,’has to be the starting point for anything that goes under the label of strategy.’ While the Ayida Panel failed at doing this, it becomes the administrative standard by which to assess the remaining four reform strategies that define the democratic dispensation in Nigeria-the Obasanjo Renewal Programme, the Yar’Adua Civil Service Reform Programme,the Transformation Agenda of the Jonathan administration, and President Muhammadu Buhari’s ongoing Change Agenda. The four reform agenda are founded on the fundamental principle that no transformation of the Nigerian state would be possible without a capable, efficient and corruption-free public service. The Obasanjo, Yar’Adua and Jonathan administrations therefore accepted the reform blueprint contained in the National Strategy for Public Service Reform (NSPSR) which projected the vision of a world class public service that is professionalised enough to deliver government policies and programmes.

    Much as these reform agenda are beautiful programmes of renewal and revitalization that has the benefits of administrative hindsight, visions are often undermined by reality. And the present reality is that the civil service system in Nigeria, in spite of the multitude of beautiful reform visions and strategies, is still struggling to deliver democratic dividends to millions of Nigerians who are sighing under the terrible burden of poverty. The Nigerian Civil Service is still far from being a world class public service.

    If, as Norman Cousins insists, ‘history is a vast early warning system,’ have we learnt any good and practical lessons from 1971? From the historical nuggets of reform trajectory that we have outlined here, what are the fundamental administrative lessons to be learnt? What are the defining issues in civil service renewal effort? That will be the subject of the fourth part.

  • Reforming the Nigerian Civil Service: my struggles, my pain, my triumphs (II)

    I prefaced this long series, in the first part, with a narration of the pain of exit and how for me, retiring from the Nigerian Civil Service (NCS) is definitely not the end of my reform business to transform a system I have dedicated twenty seven years of my life to. I made the point that exit simply implies that I am transitioning from being a critical insider to becoming a critical outsider who can bring an external perspective to bear on what the civil service has done wrong, what it has done right and in what direction we can move it towards becoming a world class institution. For me, my institutional life may have come to an end, but my foot is still caught in the mat of the institutional dynamics of the NCS. I am too involved to just bid goodbye to a system I see as being critical to the coming national glory of Nigeria.

    But first, it is necessary that I tell the story of how I came to be in this system in the first place. I must say it has nothing to do with fascination or coincidence. Far from it. Rather, I would say Providence perhaps planned it all along! I am a scholar by heart. My original and lifelong desire is to be a philosopher. I have a sanitized spirit that is suitable for contemplation, and the cloistered life of the ivory tower.

    In my projection, if I would ever come in contact with administrative matters, then it would be on the pages of critical and scholarly books and conferences. Opting for Political Science, rather than Philosophy, but I was deluding myself all along-reality is much stronger than projections! And the reality in the late eighties for me, while I was in the postgraduate school, was that I needed survival on the Abraham Maslow hierarchy of my need so urgently, before I could think of climbing the ladder of self-esteem towards scholastic attainment. The Nigerian Civil Service, through the Presidency, came to my rescue. And at the centre of my entry dilemma was Professor Ojetunji Aboyade. He played several subtle roles that played out into larger future dynamics for me as a critical change agent in the reform of the civil service system in Nigeria. ‘To be a catalyst,’ Theodore Zeldin informs, ‘is the ambition most appropriate for those who see the world as being in constant change, and who, without thinking that they can control it, wish to influence its direction.’

    Ojetunji Aboyade was exactly that, an intellectual catalyst that turned my rabid fear of systemic dysfunction in the civil service into a serious fascination with the dynamics of institutional change. He influenced the direction that would become cogent for me to becoming a change agent. He supplied me with the intellectual prism from which to refract the dysfunction into a philosophy of reform. And that became the research dynamics which I have pursued since I determined to pursue a doctorate hinged around the consuming desire to understand the operational dynamics of the civil service system in Nigeria. I was however very lucky to have entered the civil service when Prof. Aboyade was struggling with Nigeria’s development struggle through policy designs and advisory professionalism. Aboyade came into public service with all the energies of a committed intellectual ready to inject sound ideas and practices into the system. Unfortunately, Nigeria was at that point under the terrible pathology of the Dutch and Double Dutch Disease arising from the oil windfall of the 70s. It was not long before all his tight implementation schedules and the tightening of the Development Planning praxis met the fundamental challenge of weak institutional and executive capacity in the civil service and national valueless-ness. Aboyade was therefore caught in between development visions, policies and plans, on the one hand, and implementation and development outcomes on the other. This was with the full conceptual awareness of the intellectual current of the time that was hinged on the seminar contributions of institutional economists and implementation researchers whose advocacy birth the dominant though controversial reform theory of our age, the new public management (NPM) paradigm.

    This was precisely the depressing administrative context within which I began my initiation into the civil service system and public administration research. The redeeming factor for me was that it was also an incredible period that gave birth to critical research dynamics spearheaded by Aboyade himself. I had no choice at the time but to accept Aboyade’s challenge to me-‘You need to transform from being just a researcher to be a change agent; with the transformation of the civil service system through expert knowledge and reform as your mission’.  And the initiation I needed came when I became Assistant Secretary to the White Paper Panel on the Ayida Public Service Review Panel of 1995 through invitation. The Ayida Review Panel was commissioned to revisit the 1988 Civil Service Reform which had failed to redress the administrative system into a desired projection. Its task was to reinvent those factors that would facilitate the restoration of the civil service into an effectively performing institution.

    Being the technically-minded member of the White Paper Panel’s Secretariat was a blessing! It afforded the internal perspective in articulating and interrogating all aspects of administrative system. But in a concrete sense, this was the point at which my research focus took hold and took off. The dynamics that connects the Prof. Dotun Phillips Study Report, the Koshoni White Paper, the Decree 43 of 1988 and the Ayida Review Panel gave me the intellectual impetus to commence a critical interrogation of the civil service system in its entirety and the condition for its institutional reform. For instance, as Assistant Secretary to the Ayida Review Panel, I had the opportunity to not only confront the weaknesses of Decree 43, but also the limitations of the Ayida Panel Report itself. It immediately became clear to me that theory and practice must be integrated if a committed reformer must achieve a coherent and robust rejuvenation of the civil service system in Nigeria that speak to the nuanced chemistry of the administrative system. Theory and practice are already implicated in the complex and complicated trajectory of linking vision of reform to its implementation, especially within a difficult administrative context like Nigeria.

    So, after a thorough Masters degree in political theory, public administration offers the most immediate theoretical entry point into the challenge of understanding the civil service system in Nigeria. By 2002, I had the second privilege of heading a technical team from the Management Service Office (MSO) that was to undertake a strategic planning study and exercise that could facilitate the proper restructuring of the system. This study turned out to be a conceptual revelation for me because, apart from the exposure it afforded through Donor Agencies technical assistance that enable study tour of over 25 public services around the globe, it threw up those critical questions that enabled me jumpstart my doctoral reflection on the civil service. These fundamental questions remain fundamental to the reform of the Nigerian civil service: (a) what kind of public service does Nigeria need to successfully manage the dynamics of a transition from military authoritarianism to civilian democracy? (b) How can the vision of building a public service that works for the people be realised within the shortest possible time? (c) How can the size of the chronically imbalanced bureaucracy, with a structure that harbours 70% of the workforce at the unskilled level, be streamlined? (d) How can the skills deficit at the senior management levels be corrected through re-skilling and the injection of skills from other sectors, without a far-reaching process of painful rightsizing and declaration of redundancies? (e) What are the appropriate personnel policies, pay structure and operational cost ratios that are most cost effective and consistent with the optimal productivity level of the national economy? (f) How can the civil service be made more sensitive to the political objectives of policy makers and be, at the same time, accountable to the people as clients without its independence and professionalism being undermined? (g) What should ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) be doing that is different from what they have been doing to become strategic partner in national transformation?

    When my research got under way, I was buoyed by the enthusiasm about what is possible. Ludwig Wittgenstein, the German philosopher, accurately captured my dissertation mood: ‘The riddle does not exist. If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it.’ The bubble of reform enthusiasm that began a long time ago, stayed with me till retirement. It nearly burst through the many terrible encounters of disillusionments, frustrations and dejection. Once, at reform training in Wellington, New Zealand, a renowned reform expert specifically told me: ‘With your passion and depth of knowledge for reform, be ready for war!’ My reform efforts bred friends and foes. But it also generated invaluable theoretical, historical and practical insights that are the sine qua non for transformation. One of the achievements of the doctoral dissertation is that it enabled a concise but critical assessment of the trajectory of reform in Nigeria, especially from 1974 to date. I will examine this in the next part.

  • Oshoala struggles in Liverpool debut

    Oshoala struggles in Liverpool debut

    Asisat Oshoala started in her first defeat for the Liverpool Ladies as they got the title defense of the FA Women’s Super League off on a sore note in a 1-2 home loss to newly promoted Sunderland Ladies on Wednesday.

    The Super Falcons striker was on the green patch for 73 minutes but failed to find the back of the net.

    Asisat who joined the WSL 1 side from Rivers Angels as a highly sort talent following her exploits at the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup and player of the tournament performance at the Africa Women’s Championship in Namibia.

    However, she had only one high point worthy of note in the first 45 minutes as described by the commentary:

    ”The Reds went close to equalizing before the break as Martha Harris and Asisat Oshoala arrived late at the back post. It fell to the Nigerian, who snatched at the chance and struck wide of the target.”

  • The man Lam: His life, times, struggles

    The man Lam: His life, times, struggles

    The eventful but appreciably exemplary political odyssey of Alhaji Lamidi Onaolapo Adesina, a former Governor of Oyo State, ended yesterday. To the shock of many who had expected him to continue to play the role of a leading figure in Oyo State politics, he breathed his last at the St. Nicholas Hospital, Lagos, after a fairly protracted illness. Fondly called ‘Lam’ by his admirers, he was aged 73. Prior to his governance of the state between 1999 and 2003, he had been a member of the Oyo State House of Assembly in the Second Republic . And until his demise, he was the leader of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in Oyo State . He was seen as one of the strong pillars that bonded the party’s members together.

    Born January 20, 1939, the late Adesina was also an educator before his sojourn in politics, which eventually culminated in his election as the state’s number-one citizen on 29 May 1999 . He had been elected on the platform of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) which metamorphosed into the Action Congress (AC) and ultimately, the ACN.

    He attended Loyola College , Ibadan and later studied at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka from1961 to 1963 before he later attended the University of Ibadan in 1971. He worked in private educational institutions before entering politics and eventually throwing his cap into the political ring.

    The first indication that he would gfo a long way in the political arena came in the 70s when he ran a regular column in the Nigerian Tribune. Despite the military’s hold on power and being a teacher, he found means of criticising the successive military administrations.

    Shortly after the civil war, it was time for Chief Obafemi Awolowo and the political elite of the South West to plot the way forward, especially with the promise that the civilians would be brought back to the scene in 1974. he was thus a prominent member of the Committee of Friends put together by the late Chief Awolowo.

    In the Second Republic , he sought and secured a seat at the House of Representatives. When the military dismissed politicians from the stage in 1983, Adesina resumed his socio-political activism. He was a prominent leader of the Social Democratic Party in Oyo State in the aborted Third Republic and his total support for the party’s presidential candidate whose victory was annulled led to his detention. The military declared him a Prisoner of War for his activities as a leader of the resistance movement, National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) that spearheaded the campaign against the annulment. He distinguished himself in the trenches and emerged a commander of the political army in the Southwest sector.

    The late Adesina enjoyed the reputation of being a major sponsor of the incumbent Oyo State Governor Abiola Ajimobi in his successful election into the Senate to represent Oyo South in 2003. But the father-son relationship between them soon went on sabbatical as they later fell apart. Ajimobi pitched his tent with the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP).

    However, as it is often said, no permanent enmity in politics, their differences later gave way for a refreshed order – a reunion.

    In October 2009, the two were friends again and thus, both became leaders of the AC in Oyo State . The truce, it was learnt, was brokered by the party’s national leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.

    With the death of the widely-acclaimed strongman of Oyo politics, Alhaji Lamidi Ariyibi Adedibu, not a few had tipped the late Adesina to be his ready successor for his experience and roles in the politics of the state, especially in recent times. More importantly, he had turned the rallying point in ACN’s affairs in the state.

    However, all was not a bed of roses for him as at one time or the other, he had to swim in troubled waters of awry political developments. Perhaps of particular mention was when he stepped on toes at the dawn of Ajimobi’s current administration. The late ex-governor was quoted as saying that he would “prevail on Ajimobi not to probe” his predecessor, Otunba Adebayo Alao-Akala over the “k-legged” way he allegedly ran the affairs of the state while in the saddle.

    To many an observer who had been disenchanted with the Alao-Akala-led administration, the late Adesina was playing a spokesman of the flamboyant ex-governor that many love to hate. But to the man, his intention was borne out of his love for the people of the state and his conviction that Ajimobi needed not dissipate energy on such a “distraction”, instead of focusing his total attention on genuinely moving the state forward within a short period.

    With the guidance of his like, so far, the people of the state are already inhaling a refreshing air of a new order under Ajimobi.

    As the politician was interred in his Felele home yesterday, it goes without saying that members of his party, and indeed, the people of his state would miss a politician who believed that politics must be a tool of change in the fortunes of the majority.