Speeches

2010 Nigeria Civil Service Day

Jun 22, 2010 - I feel truly honoured and very proud to be invited to deliver the 2010 Public Service Lecture to commemorate the 2010 Nigeria Civil Service Day.

In the last 11 (eleven) years of our democratic experience, we have seen States and the Federal Government pitted against themselves in what I perceive to be a clear misunderstanding of roles within a federation.

Political affiliations had become a measure for deciding whether states fairly partook of the common developmental benefits available within the federation.

It is indeed a rare and high altitude for the Government of Lagos to fly and only a man of the character and strong conviction of Mr. Steven Oronsaye, CON, the Head of the Civil Service of the Federal Government could have taken such an audacious step.

I am delighted for this recognition to the Government and people of Lagos on whose behalf I exercise authority that entitles me to this podium. But my delight is more profound and most expansive for my country, that its Public Service at the Federal Government level is led by a man of such sterling qualities who holds a strong opinion on the side of logic, merit and integrity on many issues of national development.

I have been asked to speak on the theme, "Strengthening Leadership and Management for Improved Public Service Delivery in Africa" within the context of our country's annual commemoration of the African Day of the Civil Service based on the Tangier Declaration of 1994 and in the process, to evaluate Nigeria's Civil Service in the last 50 (fifty) years and project the way forward for better service delivery to the Nigerian populace.

Perhaps therefore I should start by suggesting that we could never thoroughly evaluate 50 years of public service in Nigeria in a lecture such as this, and my effort will be directed towards broad principles which produced results in the past and I will therefore attempt to interrogate those principles, to see if they are still relevant and whether we still apply them, and whether we should continue with them.

I have looked at the document incorporating the declaration made in Tangier, Morocco in June 1994 at the first Pan-African Conference of the Ministers of the Civil Service and an observation contained in that declaration is very important and it reads:-

"The Conference also considered that investment in human resources constituted an essential basis for the development of nations and a principal factor for achieving progress and welfare".

In my view, this is the crux of the matter. What kind of people, in terms of their quality, education, integrity and ethics have we attracted to the Public Service of our country in the last 50 (fifty) years?

I think the answer to this question and the assessment of the process of engagement and disengagement into the Public Service will take us very far, if we realize that the Public Service is an institution that requires people to make it function; because when institutions fail or succeed, it is people that have either failed or succeeded.

I think it is fair to say that in terms of concept and object, Public Service in any part of the world is ideally the best service. It is service that is enobling as it is humbling, because it is an immense privilege, which must never be abused.

It is a responsibility that imposes enormous burdens of pressure of expectations of a large people on the shoulders of a few people, who are expected to find solutions to the daily challenges of life that confound the entire community, such as security; power supply; affordable education and healthcare, a sound economy that provides jobs for as many as possible, in a way that secures the common and public good.

This is as best a generalization of the expectation of the Public Service as I can muster, and I dare say that wherever you look, whether on the African continent, Europe, Asia, the Middle East or the Americas, this is the feeling that you will encounter in terms of public expectation and this explains why there seems to be a love-hate relationship between the members of the public at large, and their public servants.

From continent to continent, allegations of waste, inefficiency and sometimes corruption afflict the Public Service, yet within these generalizations there are models of success; there are models that requires overhauling, and there are models that should not be emulated.

I have alluded to the love-hate relationship between public servants and the people they serve and it is deserving that I say a little more.

The first thing that I think needs to be said is the fact that as distinct from the Public Service, there is a private sector, and my understanding of that private sector as we have applied it in the Public Service of Lagos State, is that everybody that is not employed in the Public Service is a member of the private sector, from the unemployed, to the students in our schools, the patients in our hospitals right up to the richest individuals and the largest private corporation.

The second thing is that we are employees of these people, and we owe our right to be employed in the Public Service to their expectation that their needs will be met by us based on their belief, that we are the right persons to be entrusted to the commonwealth of the state which comprises assets that are human and natural, including their resources that are collected and kept in our care in the form of tax contributions.

The third thing is that we exist only for them and not for ourselves and that any privileges that our office brings are conferred only for the purpose of ensuring that our employers' needs are met.

Fourthly, we recognize that our employers will never be unanimous in their demands and expectations of us. Even if they want the same thing, we understand that they may disagree as to timing or the mode of the performance of that thing.

This is the root of the love-hate relationship. This is why we will never be loved by all at the same time or hated by all at the same time.

Because we understand this, we have evolved to follow the time honoured principles of decision making, by subjecting policy formulation and decision making to the best test known to human experience; which is, whether the decision will bring the greatest good to the greatest number of people, because there will never be unanimity.

This is why we intervened on Agege Motor Road and in Oshodi. We became disliked by a few, but appreciated by the majority. Because we rose to recover a road, built with tax payer's money which a few people had taken over in their own pursuit of daily living.

By principle and by law, it was wrong for the interest of a few people to supersede the interests of over 3 million commuters who were prevented from using an asset built with their taxes.

As a matter of law, we understood that rights are not absolute. They also impose duties. My right to pursue a daily living imposes a duty on me to do so legitimately in a way that does not threaten the fabric of society. It imposes a duty on me not to obstruct a public thoroughfare.

I will commend these principles to every member of the Public Service involved in the process of policy formulation, and decision making.

They are more empirical and defensible; and subject to rational analysis and discussion, as opposed to the subjective and nebulous concepts of quota, federal character, geo-political zones and the many unscientific values that have characterized our public service policy formulation and decision making since the 1970s.

Given the expectation of the people from their public servants, it is clear that in terms of recruiting personnel into the Public Service, the weak cannot serve the strong; the blind cannot lead the sighted and the uneducated cannot lead the educated.

You will observe that I have used the words serve and lead almost interchangeably; this is because they connote almost the same thing in terms of responsibility because it is said the "the leader of the people is their servant".

Within the context of service and leadership in the Public Service therefore, an evaluation of our experience in the last 50 (years) will reveal that at one time; the period that I refer to as the period of great prosperity, between 1966-1976 some of the best of our people were in the Public Service of the Regional, State and Central Governments.

I will not here belabour the point by mentioning names, but from the judiciary, to the legislature and the executive at the Regional, State and Central Governments, I leave you all to think back at those great names, the Super Permanent Secretaries and so on, and do you then wonder how at that time, the value of our national currency was stronger than the dollar, how we built so many refineries, sea and air ports, provided water supply, built the tallest building and first television station.

Since 1978 or thereabouts, the biggest possible blow was inflicted on the Nigerian Public Service by a needless interference with the security of their tenure of employment in a way that discouraged the best of our people from pursuing a life in the Public Service.

The security of tenure of the Public Service employee is not accidental. It is a necessary and self protecting mechanism designed to ensure that the public servant remains a thoroughbred professional who does not lose his independence of thought and rationality of action in the process of advising the political leadership.

The consummate public servant must be able to advise any political leader with courage and truthfulness in the interest of the public, no matter his prejudices about the political party in Government or even the person of the leader of the Government.

That is why his tenure of employment is statutory. That is why our Courts have held, like all Courts in the commonwealth jurisdiction, that unlike in the private sector, a contract of employment in the Public Service has a statutory flavor and requires rigorous compliance with process, to bring it to an end.

I am of the firm view that it is only when we confer the protection in words and in deed, that we can truly attract the very best of our people back to the Public Service.

Otherwise, as long as we subject the process of recruitment of the people who will plan our police, water corporations, refineries, power supply, hospitals, schools, to the test of the lowest common denominators, instead of the highest common denominators, we should not expect appropriate security, regular water or power supply, good public schools or hospitals or indeed a prosperous life.

If the very best of us find work in private sector more attractive than in the public sector, it is a bad omen.

We must reverse it to avert doom. We must raise standards for employment into the Public Service in the way that the private sector has done. Indeed logic demands that we do.

If the private sector that depends on the public sector to provide the enabling environment for it to operate is raising its standards of operation, what prosperity can lie ahead for it, if the Public Service institution that should provide the primary foundation for its success is lowering standards; or simply stagnating on them.

The promotion of competition, repeated training and re-training, a sense of security at work and a process of reward for excellence and appropriate sanction for sloppiness; the recognition of merit over base consideration of ethnicity are some of the ways by which standards can be restored and raised.

With heavy sense of modesty, I think the Lagos story attempts to do this. The evidence lies in the fact that it is the same set of public servants, the same set of police officers, the same set of Engineers, Architects, sanitation officers that have been responsible for improved security and the transformation of life in the State, we did not go to bring new people from elsewhere.

They have demonstrated that nothing is impossible if people find a new purpose to pursue, based on the merit, integrity, reward for hard work and competition and that the Nigerian Public Service can be a treasure house of resources that must be continuously reformed, re-trained, challenged to compete and dare to achieve.

The future of our country lies in the hands of the Public Service. The people who occupy it are our greatest resource and not necessarily the assets we entrust to them.

We must from today therefore begin a process that ensures that only the very best of us, who can think for us, act for us, and endure for us, get into the Public Service.

This is one, if not the most critical path to ensure better service delivery to the Nigerian populace.

Apart from the quality of personnel required to deliver an efficient Public Service, another critical factor is the process of the Public Service.

It is important in an evaluation of 50 years of Nigerian Public Service and in the attempt to project a path for the future for all of us who discuss it, to understand and appreciate what it is, how it functions and its impact on our lives.

In contemporary governance across the world, the public service is perhaps one of the most important institutions that man has evolved as a vehicle for predictable and just allocation of resources from the commonwealth of each society.

It is an institution that is process and procedure driven in such a way that the word "Bureaucracy" has become almost synonymous with the Public Service even though it is doubtful that it owes its origin to the Public Service.

Indeed, those who have sought to either subvert the process of the Public Service or who are impatient with it have sought to use "bureaucracy" as a euphemism for delay or sluggishness but nothing could be further from the truth.

"Bureaucracy" simply means the system of official rules and ways of doing things that a government or an organization applies.

I cannot for the constraint of time dwell too much on this but while I agree that processes used 50 (fifty) years ago need to be reviewed to meet and cope with today's technology age, I cannot pass the opportunity this occasion offers to appeal to all of us to demonstrate more respect for the Public Service process and allow it to work.

Matters that should be dealt with at the level of a department need not rise to the level of Permanent Secretary or even the political head of a Ministry simply because we are impatient. It dampens morale, disrupts orderly progression and predictable development and is a huge clog to the service delivery efficiency of the Public Service.

The effects are extremely deleterious and far reaching in that a little inefficiency in Public Service delivery has effects on the lives of thousands sometimes millions of people in one go.

As I have said before, the Public Service is a process driven institution, communicating through files and several hundreds of thousands of memoranda and minutes from officer to officer and it is capable of achieving almost anything if it is efficiently deployed.

Those who seek to take benefit of its enormous powers and capabilities and tap from its almost fathomless resource must understand its language.

The communication is through files, and therefore a lot of writing and reading is a pre-requisite for achieving efficiency. Those files contain proposals and submissions making recommendations and asking for directives and approvals in the established hierarchy of superiority within the service.

The memoranda and minutes deliberately enjoy protection of secrecy under the Official Secrets Act and the Oaths of Secrecy that binds pubic officials not to disclose what is brought to their attention until the disclosure is made public by the authority empowered to do so after a decision has been made.

The Oath of Secrecy has many purposes, but perhaps one of its most important purpose is to promote freedom and exchange of ideas between public officers in the process of formulating and debating policies in an atmosphere that is not stifling, with knowledge that anybody that will be adversely affected by the decision is prevented from knowing the identity of the originator of the policy because once the policy or decision is made, it becomes that of a team; an institution, not that of one public officer.

In closing therefore, I must thank Mr. Oronsaye once again for the invitation, and state also that I am sure that nothing new has been said by me, but I am nonetheless pleased to be able to repeat to you methods that we have tried successfully in the past in the hope that it will persuade all of us of the need to return to the basic principles that worked for us in the past and can work for us again today with modifications to adopt technology, respond to globalization and the need for increased automation to cope with the demands of a growing population.

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, as I extend sincere congratulations to the members of the Public Service of the Federal Government at this commemorative event for the Year 2010 Public Service Day, permit me to assert that I am of the very clear opinion that, the Public Service of any Local Government, State Government or National Government, is its most important public corporation.

It must be peopled by its most valued human resource and run in the most efficient manner on the basis of the highest ethics, standards and rules of corporate governance.

Contrary to the view that profit is the motive of private corporations; I contend that the Public Service must be run on higher expectations of profit; expectation of profit that are higher than those set in the private sector.

The difference only lies in two areas; the first is that the profit of the Public Sector unlike that of the private sector corporations is not measured in cash but in the quality of improvement in the standard of living of the citizens who are the owners of the public corporations; and secondly, in the fact that whereas the profit of private corporations are divided among the private owners as dividends, the profits of public corporations and institutions are continually re-invested into society to expand the possibilities of common good and prepare the future for the next generation.

Thank you for your attention.

Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN
Governor of Lagos State