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  • Tinubu: His ideas, battles and triumphs

    Tinubu: His ideas, battles and triumphs

    Group Political Editor EMMANUEL OLADESU highlights the ideas and struggles of the All Progressives Congress (APC) stalwart, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, as he celebrates his 65th birthday in Lagos this week.

    Courage, determination, resilience, devotion to principles and commitment to the high ideals of democracy are the virtues that have defined and shaped the character of Senator Bola Tinubu in almost thirty years of his sojourn in politics.

    In post-Bola Ige era, no other politician has bestrode the political landscape like a colossus. For 16 years in this dispensation, the Asiwaju of Lagos was the most outstanding opposition leader, held in high esteem by the forces opposed to the mainstream politics. Also, he made history as the arrowhead of progressive forces that aborted the dream of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to ruin the bewildered country beyond 2015. The birth and survival of the mega party, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), are attributed to Tinubu’s power of ideas, foresight, strategy, and organisational prowess.

    As the eminent politician rolls out drums for his 65th birthday celebrations this week, the progressive family is united in celebration of a soldier of democracy, whose illustrious career, ideas, battles, patriotism and service to the nation offer an inspiration to the younger generation.

    For him, the road to fame was long and tortuous. Tinubu is not a politician without a second address. He had a rich curriculum vitae before venturing into politics. He had worked hard and made fortunes in the accounting profession as an auditor in Mobil, a thriving oil company.

    The man of the future was undeterred by his troubled childhood. He confronted life difficulties with uncommon courage. Tinubu left Nigeria for the United States of America in search of the proverbial golden fleece in 1975. His next point of call was the Richard Daley College, Illinois, where he was on the college’s Honours’ List, and later, Chicago State University, Chigaco where he acquired a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration, with specialization in Accounting and Management.

    Tinubu shone like a star in the tertiary institution. In his second year, he was accorded the honour of teaching remedial tutorial classes on part-time basis to the students of the faculty. He was on the Dean’s List throughout his undergraduate years. His awards included the Outstanding Students’ Award, University Scholar’s Award and Certificate of Merit in Accounting and Finance in his first year. Apart from his academic prowess, he was also a campus politician. He was elected as the President of the Accounting Society in his final year.

    After his university education, Tinubu worked with the American based-accounting firm, Arthur Anderson. Later, he moved to ‘Deloitte Haskins and Sells’, now Deloitte Haskins and Touche for his professional training. The young accountant also received professional training in other prominent firms, including General Motors, First National Bank of ChicagoProcter and Gamble, International Harvester, Fortune 50 Firms, and DEC, the largest communication and utility company in the United States.

    Between 1981 and 1082, Tinubu was a member of the Deloitte team that established the financial sytem of ARAMCO, the giant oil company. He was even retained by the firm to supervise the implementation of its financial system. However, his employment with the Mobil Producing Nigeria as a senior auditor marked a turning point. He rose to the position of the Audit Manager, and later, Treasurer of the Mobil Producing, Nigeria. Under his leadership, there were prudent financial management, aggressive corporate think-tank for the reorganisation of the company’s financial system and treasury activities, the integration of staff development, cost saving and fraud detection and prevention. The experience made Tinubu to describe himself as a financial surgeon.

    In the Third Republic, Tinubu entered politics as a new breed. His colleagues in Mobil were taken aback that he was leaving a lucrative job for an uncertain career in politics. He was a founding member of the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP), on which platform he contested for the Senate in Lagos West District. The senatorial form was purchased on his behalf by Chief Kola Oseni, his relation. He was supported by the powerful political group, Primose, led By Chief Dapo Sarunmi. The group was locked in supremacy battle with the group, led by former Lagos State Governor Lateef Jakande, in the Lagos SDP. During the screening, the chairman of the panel, Alhaji Lanre Rasak, was surprised that Tinubu answered critical questions with much intelligence, despite being perceived as a green horn. He predicted that he will seize Lagos politics by storm.

    Tinubu’s opponent at the poll was Mrs. Kemi Nelson of the defunct National Republican Convention (NRC), who he defeated, emerging as the senator that polled the highest number of votes in the country. He had wanted to vie for the Senate Presidency, but was persuaded to step down for Dr. Iyorcha Ayu. Tinubu was not a bench warmer. He was the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Finance, Appropriation and Currency.

    It was distressing to him that the military later boxed the country into an avoidable crisis, following the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election won by the late Chief Moshood Abiola. He joined the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), which fought the military to a standstill. When his life was threatened, he left the country and became the major financier and pillar of the pro-democracy movement abroad. It was almost a lost battle. Although the military surrendered power to civilians, the mandate was not restored to Abiola, who died in detention.

    In 1999, Tinubu returned home to participate in the Abdulsalami transition programme. Although he wanted to return to the Senate, the leaders of Afenifere/NADECO believed that he will be a good governor. The Justice Forum was rooting for him. The only dissenting voice was the late Chief Ganiyu Dawodu, who had pitched his tent with Funso Williams, former Works Commissioner. Reflecting on the struggle for the Alliance for Democracy (AD) ticket, a party elder, Oba Olatunji Hamzat, said: “Dawodu’s preference for Williams who had served in Abacha’s government over his own comrades who suffered in the trenches with him remains a puzzle.” Other aspirants were Dr. Wahab Dosunmu, Second Republic minister, who became a senator, Senator Kofoworola Bucknor-Alerele, Uthman Sodipe, a journalist, Tawa Williams, an engineer, Hon. Rasheed Shitta-Bey, a former House of Representatives member, and Dapo Durosinmi Etti.

    None of them could match Tinubu’s arsenal and goodwill. Although Bucknor-Akerele was a NADECO chieftain, she was not harassed by the Abacha government, unlike her colleagues. Her structure was not solid. Also, Durosinmi-Etti, a lawyer, lacked a strong campaign machinery. Although he was Dawodu’s cousin, his name did not feature on the AD ballot paper during the primary. Tawa Williams, the former General Manager of the Lagos State Water Corporation, was not considered as a serious candidate. Many believed that he was warming up for the deputy governorship ticket. Shodipe’s mounted a vigorous campaign on the platform of the Eko Forum, with the slogan: ‘new vision, new leadership.’ Surprisingly, he came fourth.

    It was a turbulent primary. The party chairman, Dawodu, could not been seen for two days for the release of the result. According to the results, Tinubu scored 10,933 votes, beating Funso Williams (9,678), Dr. Dosunmu (6,023), Shodipe (381), Bucknor-Akerele (223), Tawa Williams (112) and Durosinmi-Etti (five votes). Since Dawodu was in hibernation, the AD Acting National Chairman, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, intervened and took Tinubu’s name to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) office to beat the deadline for the submission of the party’s nominee. Following Tinubu’s success at the primary, supporters of Funso Williams in the Network Alliance, including Hon. Omotilewa Aro-Lambo, Dr. Leke Pitan, Mrs. Nelson, “showed up in the Tinubu camp singing loyalty and adherence.” The three made the cabinet list after the general elections. Bucknor-Akerele emerged as the deputy governor.

    Cracks appeared on the wall as predicted by a party elder, Alhaji Busura Alebiosun, that it will be difficult for Tinubu and Bucknor-Akerele to work as a team. Later, they parted ways. After Bucknor-Akerele’s exit, Olufemi Pedro became the deputy governor.

    Tinubu’s attention was diverted from governance by his detractors. His foes went to court, challenging the authenticity of his hard-earned certificate. But, he triumphed. The dust settled down and he continued with the implementation of his programmes, which earned him a second term in 2003. The aim of his programme was the abolition of poverty. While his colleagues-Lam Adesina (Oyo State), Adebayo Adefarati (Ondo), Adeniyi Adebayo (Ekiti), and Olusegun Osoba (Ogun) were swept away by the political earthquake in the Southwest, Tinubu survived the PDP onslaught. However, his 2007 senatorial bid was aborted by the power that be. The coast was not clear. But, he succeeded in handing over to a competent successor, Babatunde Fashola (SAN).

    Tinubu played a major role in the return of stolen mandates in Ekiti, Ondo, Edo and Osun, which catapulted Kayode Fayemi, Olusegun Mimiko, Adams Oshiomhole,  and Rauf Aregbesola to power. However, he was subjected to harassment, following his trial by the Code of Conduct Bureau. Again, he survived the ordeals and mobilised like-minded compatriots across the political parties to merge into the APC, ahead of 2015 general elections.

    As a chieftain of NADECO/Afenifere/Justice Forum, Tinubu has lent his voice to the debate on the national question. He is an apostle of restructuring, state and community police and devolution of power. Although he had been an advocate of a Sovereign National Conference (SNC), the former governor opposed it when it was set up by former President Goodluck Jonathan. Tinubu clarified that he rejected the move because it was a Greek gift, stressing that the initiator was not sincere. The outcome of the conference was discarded by the government that set it up.

    To Asiwaju Tinubu, power is not served alar carte. He had become the leader of opposition since 2003. Under his leadership, the success of power shift in some states in the Southwest and Southsouth became the bedrock of the struggle for power by the opposition at the centre. Many doubted the capacity of the alliance to depose the PDP from power. But, Tinubu offered the inspiration, saying that  the coalition will be supported by Nigerians because they were desirous of a new lease of life. Reflecting on the success of the APC in 2015 polls, a chieftain from the Southwest, Ayo Afolabi, said: “Tinubu is a strategist extraordinaire.”

    A party chieftain, Abiodun Ogunleye, described Tinubu as a factor in the Nigerians politics. He said: “He is not a president, but greater than a president. He is not a god, but feared more than a god. He is not armed, but those who fear him are armed. He is not at home, but everywhere. When he coughs, his enemies catch cold. When he travels, they fear of what his mission is.

    “When at home, they fear what he will do. When he talks, they fear what he says will cost. It is more of problem when he keeps quiet.”

  • 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.