12 Dec 2008 |
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War against idleness in the civil service By Levi Obijiofor Friday, 12 December 2008 A revolution is about to start in the Federal Civil Service. It is a reform that promises to change civil servants’ attitude to government work and in particular the culture of idleness that has crippled official business in virtually all federal ministries, departments and institutions across the country. The Guardian reported on Tuesday this week that the boss of the federal civil service, Amma Pepple, has directed senior officers in the civil service to process all files on their desks within 24 hours of receipt of those files. Ms Pepple was also reported to have cautioned officers against receiving money as inducement intended to facilitate fast tracking of the processing of files. Ms Pepple has a huge challenge ahead of her. She is fighting a culture of sluggishness in which conservative civil servants have worked for many years and decades on the understanding that government work is nobody’s business. Would Ms Pepple succeed in her campaign to change this culture? There is no reason why she can’t if she is committed to reforming the civil service and if she has the solid support of those who appointed her, as well as the backing of the directors-general and other senior officers in the federal service. Ms Pepple was reported to have said that a committee would monitor the movement of files in order to track the source of delays. This is a fundamental error of judgment. Why rely on a committee when there are directors-general and senior servants in the ministries? The reliance on a committee to enforce the new guidelines would undermine rather than advance the intended objectives. Committees can sometimes imperil good ideas. And there are many examples of good programmes that crashed through poor supervision by committees. In some instances, committee members spent too much time at meetings rather than in the field to monitor the programmes.
The main challenge in the latest civil service reform programme lies in its implementation. How would cynical civil servants, long used to working in an easy-going, devil-may-care manner, suddenly adjust to this new requirement? Mind you, there is nothing radically innovative in the proposed reform. Prompt processing of files has always been a part of the responsibilities of senior civil servants. Sadly, that has hardly been the case. Based on the perception that government work is nobody’s business, federal and indeed state civil servants – senior and junior – have behaved for many years as if they were not accountable and responsible to anyone. Senior civil servants often behaved as if they deserved a special reward before they could process files on their desks. This is unacceptable behaviour. Like other workers in different sectors, civil servants must perform the tasks for which they were hired. Anyone who had done some business in any federal ministry, department, or even in an administrative office in a tertiary education institution would have suffered the indignity of succumbing to the terms often dictated by some civil servants and their office assistants. Office assistants can be particularly dictatorial because they have the power to retrieve or hide your file. Without your file, you cannot do business in federal ministries. It is as difficult as consulting a doctor who has no access to, or knowledge of, your medical history. In federal and state ministries, the office file is the equivalent of the modern era data bank. Unfortunately, in the 21st century, when electronic record keeping is the norm in technologically advanced countries, manual files still constitute the main modus through which federal and state ministries deal with their clients. The situation is bad and it privileges office assistants. It is when you have some business to do in a federal or state ministry that you realise the invincibility of office assistants. They can bring tears to your eyes. And they certainly know how to play the game. The more desperate your situation, the greater the chance that the office assistant would raise the hurdles you have to scale, particularly if a client is known to be short-tempered. Office assistants typify the notion that knowledge is power. They have knowledge of the contents and location of everyone’s file. It is this knowledge that gives the office assistant that special power over every ministry’s clients. Without paying homage to the office assistant, your file could be declared ‘missing’. Confronted with this scenario, many people dread dealing with federal ministries and departments at any level. I recall a particular experience in the mid 1980s at the scholarships’ division of the Federal Ministry of Education. At that time, the scholarships’ office was tucked inside a dishevelled building in a narrow street off the Tafawa Balewa Square in Lagos. I had travelled to Lagos from my National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) primary assignment at the NYSC secretariat, situated along Old Ife Road, Ibadan. At the scholarships’ office, I found I had to deal not only with a grouchy senior public servant but I also had to contend with a devious office assistant who, with all the air of importance around him, wanted some financial incentive as precondition for the retrieval of my file. This is the culture of institutionalised corruption and lethargic approach to government work which Ms Pepple is seeking to overturn. Sluggish attitude to government work has defied all systems of government in Nigeria – military dictatorship or democracy. A few attempts have been made to change our philosophical understanding of and public attitude to government work. For example, following the overthrow of the interminable regime of Yakubu Gowon, General Murtala Ramat Muhammad introduced radical changes in our work ethic in his first few weeks in office in 1975. He rode the wave of popular support and in some instances he also led by example. In those days, Muhammad arrived in his office much earlier than the official starting time. Some doubters predicted at the time that Muhammad would eventually run out of steam because Nigerian leaders were not known to lead by good examples. It was a wrong prediction because Muhammad continued in his frenetic work pace and official schedule until he was cut down by crazed gunman Bukar Suka Dimka and his band of self-righteous reformers. Muhammad was remarkable for what he achieved within the brief period he reigned as head of state. Within that short period, he made some noticeable impact on federal workers. He arrived at work early and watched painfully as senior and junior federal officials strolled casually into their offices late, like drunken first year university students. Muhammad wouldn’t tolerate that. He directed heads of departments and ministries to shut the doors against workers who arrived after 7.30am (the official starting time) and to take the roll of workers in order to facilitate disciplinary action against professional late-comers and other laggards. In his eagerness to reform the public service, Muhammad sacked a significant number of senior and junior federal officers for reasons ranging from ineffectiveness to documented cases of abuse of office. Indeed, his public service reforms affected not only workers in the federal service but also those in the state service. Despite his exemplary administrative style, some people still argue today that Muhammad’s reforms were not, in general, fault-free. Perhaps they are right. Perhaps they are wrong. When military dictators Muhammadu Buhari and Tunde Idiagbon terminated the Shehu Shagari democratic government and imposed themselves on the nation, they brought with them something they called “War Against Indiscipline” (WAI). In their judgment, indiscipline was the major obstacle to national development. In one sense, they were right in their philosophical understanding of a major national problem. But in another sense, they were wrong in their use of military force to solve the problem of indiscipline. Social change is never sustained if it is achieved through coercion. It is not everyone who would agree with the latest changes in the federal civil service. Perennial fault-finders will see in the new guidelines a publicity game plan designed to burnish the image of the Head of the Civil Service. Others, however, will see in the guidelines a new commitment to accelerate the pace of work in the civil service. What is not in doubt is that the culture of hard work in the federal civil service has disappeared. As some civil servants would argue: why should they work hard in a society in which everyone has caught the flu that belittles hard work?
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