(Being Address at the Maiden Edition of the FCSC Monthly In-house Seminar Series held on Thursday, the 21st of March, 2024 at the Commission’ Premises)
On the 13th of December 2023, HE President Bola Ahmed Tinubu inaugurated the newly reconstituted Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC), and gave a marching order to the Commission to “competently facilitate the transformation, reorientation, and digitization of the federal bureaucracy to enable, and not stifle, growth and enhanced private sector participation in the development of the Nigerian economy, in full adherence to the renewed hope agenda of his administration.” The FCSC has since interpreted this mandate as a charge to interrogate a fundamental question: What has the FCSC failed to do to institutionally gatekeep the federal civil service and safeguard its professional integrity, dynamics of efficiency and structural parameters despite many years of consistent and sustained administrative reforms in Nigeria?
To answer this question in a resolute way demands first the admission that given the institutional degeneration of the FCSC itself in the wake of the system-wide decline of the public administration system in Nigeria, it does not have the requisite structural and institutional parameters, to complement any forthright system-wide reform to reform the civil service reform and thereby participate in bringing to fruition the Renewed Hope Agenda of HE President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR. This therefore requires a concerted reflection outside the box in measure that will instigate the critical injection of fresh and innovative ideas, insights and models of performance that are potent sufficiently, to compel the repositioning of the federal civil service in terms of its operational capability readiness, redoubled managerial acumen and policy professional policy professionalism that could add up to become a game-changing event for the successful implementation of the Renewed Hope Agenda of the Federal Government. This is the mandate of the renewed FCSC.
And in pursuing this fundamental mandate, we must never forget to situate the FCSC within the context of the ongoing service-wide reforms, especially the performance bond-enabled central policy and service delivery coordination framework of the Presidency and the Federal Civil Service Strategy and Implementation Plan of the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation. The FCSC reforming the reform mandate is essentially a complementary task whose significance adds to the overall health of the federal public service system in Nigeria. And in complementing this ongoing reform, the FCSC is compelled to focus on the broader picture of reforming the reforms to encompass the rehabilitation of the public service in Nigeria. To clarify: this larger challenge faced by the FCSC involves answering the loaded question: Who is a Nigerian public servant? This of course looks like a very simple question. However, we begin to see how complex it is when we place it in the context of how majority of Nigerians see the public service and public servants—politicians, the police, immigration and customs, the fire system, national electricity, education boards, and many more.
How have a large majority of Nigerians encounter public servants in these ministries, departments and agencies? The answer is simple: Nigerians encounter bureaucratic inefficiency aggravated by bureaucratic corruption. And the Ease of Doing Business Index demonstrates this from year to year. It is difficult to clear your goods at any of Nigeria’s ports. It is a traumatic experience to get the police to be your friend. Nigerians pay for electricity they do not enjoy, and they are even bullied by overzealous officers in the process. Let us not even talk about the police and the politicians. Long story short: the perception of public servants by Nigerians is bad. The public service has become bureaucratic because there are so many impediments and obstacles that have prevented the system from becoming creative and innovative in rethinking its own internal operations, processes and procedures that would have made for optimal functioning.
When any ordinary Nigerian visits the federal secretariat in any state of the federation, the lack of inter-sectoral collaboration, for example, or the near-absence of technology-enabled system’s capability ensures that such a Nigerian is frustrated in making simple administrative transactions. And that terrible perception reflects badly not only on the capability readiness of the FCSC to efficiently gatekeep the professionalism of the system, but also the systemic efficiency of the public service to backstop the government’s policies that lead to good governance. And so, attending to these institutional debilitations demands a focus on three general and systemic components around which reform reflection and action must converge.
First, there is the urgent need to challenge and reengineer the traditional Weberian— “I-am-directed”—bureaucratic tradition which essentially rides on outdated administrative practices, analogue operating system, red-tape bureaucratic culture and poor stewardship with regards to the consideration given to, and the rights of the citizens as the customers who consume public services. In other words, the old Weberian system around which the Nigerian public service system still revolves crucially undermines bureaucratic efficiency. It will therefore be a wrong choice of operational mechanism to hinge the success of the Renewed Hope Agenda of the Tinubu administration. Reforming the reform of the Nigerian public system therefore implies rethinking the basis of its institutional efficiency to get service delivery done effectively.
Second, reform must confront the low organizational intelligence quotient (IQ) of the public service workforce and especially its top echelons. This has not only impacted on the essence of public spiritedness and professionalism of the public servant, it has also triggered the breakdown of public service values that makes the public service all over the world a noble calling. The root cause of this decline in the vocational spirit of a public servant can only be redressed by a consistent, coherent and strict metrics of re-professionalization.
Third, bureaucratic efficiency must be connected with the ultimate objective of achieving an effective and efficient democratic service delivery that defines what good governance is for Nigerians. And this demands that the public service must be compelled to become a performing and productive institution that holds its workforce to metrics of performance accountability. And a culture of structural performance can only take off when reforms reduce the series of systemic constraints that limits the effectiveness of the system to deliver public goods to Nigerians. We have a good example in how the President himself has got all the key governance players in the government to sign on to a performance bond with a dedicated policy coordination backend.
Fourth, a key component of performance management for productivity is a functional competency-based human resource management practices which, in the case of the Nigerian public service system, are already compromised. Two structural issues are responsible for this compromise. The first is the collapse of internal control mechanism, and the second is the rampant bureaucratic corruption aggravated by the lack of the culture of deferred gratification.
The consequence of all these institutional weaknesses is the bloated and inefficient status of the administrative system that allows it to keep generating redundancies and ad hoc structures and units of government agencies that compete with the existing bureaucratic structures in order to achieve what is often taken to be a flexible administrative arrangement unencumbered by administrative codes, rules and regulations. There is also the unfortunate replication of these parallel structures across each state of the federation. The result is the explosion of the cost of governance in ways that burden the capacity to allocate needed funds to critical governance projects to speaks more to the infrastructural needs of the citizens than mere overheads.
Records and information management controls have also become so porous that they are routinely manipulated to perpetuate bureaucratic corruption and the offloading of undesirable elements on the system. This is where the FCSC itself becomes a significant part of the general problems of the federal civil service in Nigeria. This is because the vision of the competent, patriotic, efficient and productive public servant comes from a rigorous determination of that administrative persona by the institution charged with the responsibility of gatekeeping public service professionalism. The FCSC remit is to gatekeep the sustenance of a meritocratic public service system that is founded on a strategic and competency-based human resources management that replaces 1000 mediocre officers as is, with just 100 competent self-motivated public managers with the knowledge and expertise to get the work done. To transform the public service into a meritocratic institution and re-form its professional standard and value orientation therefore demands a cultural adjustment programme and attitudinal change through putting in place due process, rules and regulations that privilege compliance and value-based strategies. All these could then be deployed into the series of entry level processes and procedures that are meant to safeguard the quality of those to be saddled with the responsibility of transforming Nigeria’s productivity profile and the performance of her democratic governance.
I need to add quickly that public service meritocracy as a diversity management strategy must be institutionalized in a manner that is able to undermine the tendency of the federal character policy to allow unqualified candidates from slipping through the cracks into the system. Employing civil servants on the basis of ethno-cultural diversity of Nigeria is not tantamount to employing just anyone to fill up quotas. This is where the FCSC and its competency-based HR practices steps into the breach to counter these tendencies. However, restoring competency-based HR practices and the merit system will eventually be meaningless if the intended reforms fail to address the wage and compensation policy dimension of meritocracy. This is one of the crucial sources of bureaucratic corruption. This consideration led to a very robust conversation with the Chairman, National Salaries, Income and Wages Commission, whose insights during the meeting, was not just reassuring but also seminal in its solution contents.
Thus, once these entry-level requirements are undermined by corrupt practices, from patronage to nepotism, it becomes very difficult to control the influx of newly employed officers who are in the civil service, for instance, because there is no employment elsewhere for them, and whose attitudes are circumscribed by political arrogance and whose objective is to engage in transactional practices that profit them at the expense of the system. Reforming the reform of the Federal Civil Service therefore commences at point of putting in place a more rigorous, firm and incorruptible entry-level assessment tests and integrity screenings. The reform vision is that the FCSC will deploy the tests to pre-screen new recruits into the workforce in ways that increase the integrity of the system and its professional capacity.
This is just the first in a long series of reform efforts targeted at challenging and transforming the current perception of who a civil or public servant is and who she should be. The FCSC is therefore saddled with the objective of reprofiling the professional status, ethical character, and administrative competence of who is eventually recruited to the civil service in a way that fast track the fundamental goal of building a new generation of public managers that Nigeria urgently requires to jumpstart the optimal performance of democratic governance. It could only be terrifying that as the entry procedures stand at the moment, that our background check on new entrants in the civil service does not scrutinize them for any criminal tendencies or activities.
It is then the intention of the FCSC to translate these series of testing, due processes, and regulations into a streamlined digitized standard operating protocols which will be deployed to recalibrate the mainstream structure of the overall processes that attend the career and professional growth and progression of civil and public servants, like staff induction, confirmation of appointment, promotion exercises, disciplinary procedures and appeals, and the general enforcement of the codes of conduct and of ethics. In this regard, one of the most immediate courses of reform actions that the FCSC is commencing is the modernization and digitization of the core operations. The most obvious will be the transition from the existing analogue testing mechanisms to the computer-based tests (CBT) to manage the forthcoming 2024 promotion exercise that will hold in the third quarter of the year.
The Commission will be rolling out several other technology-enabled innovations that harness digital technologies to facilitate effective due processes, from recruitment to promotion exercises. For instance, there is already in the works the installation of an online recruitment portal that will be accessible to all Nigerians, and which will enable eligible candidates to pre-fill recruitment form and update same from time to time ahead of advertisement for recruitment into the Federal service. In addition, eligible candidates will henceforth undergo computer-based tests (CBT) and oral interviews with results collated and released real-time. The FCSC is currently negotiating an outsourcing contract with the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) and JAMB as technical partners with a view to taking advantage of their infrastructure, networks and experience to enable online accreditation, CBT examinations and promotion interview for officers in the Federal service starting with the directorate-level officers. Other reform packages, like those that will deal with the FCSC’s need for an enhanced staff capacity and an institutional capability, will be unveiled at the right time consequent on getting the buy-in, sign-on and endorsement of the FCSC’s principal, HE, the President of Nigeria.
And this brings us squarely into the significance of this maiden monthly seminar series initiated to constitute a space for sustained learning and sharing discussion that open up contributions, from experiences and practices, on how key reform issues and problematics could be interrogated and benchmarked for their functional deployment in Nigeria. This is why today’s topic is important: “The Institutional Framework and Procedure for the Conduct of Directorate Level Exercise: Guaranteeing Integrity, Transparency and Accountability of Standard Practices.” It jumpstarts our discussion into how FCSC could itself be made ready, in operation and practices, for the mandate that was set for it by Mr. President. And it seems only logical to commence with a deep analysis of some of the critical first-level issues and risks that could be anticipated in the planned transition from an analogue to an online and computerized assessment processes and procedures. This will then eventually be followed by further technical conversations, I mean both those dealing with the transitioning of the due processes, and those articulating and interrogating further reform issues.
I have no doubt that the FCSC is a critical player in the efforts of the Federal Government to deliver on its mandate to make every Nigerian enjoy the dividends of democratic governance through a Renewed Hope Agenda anchored on the capacity readiness of the federal bureaucracy to achieve efficiency in the implementation of the government policies. However, the efficiency of the public and civil service depends solely on the reprofiling of who a meritocratic, efficient and patriotic public servant is. This is where the FCSC fulfils its constitutional mandate, and the hope reposed in it by Mr. President, to articulate and emplace a reform architecture that repositions the federal civil service as the engine room for making the public service an effective instrument for service delivery to Nigerians. The FCSC mandate starts with the collective and committed efforts of all members of the Commission to first reflect on the ideas, models, insights, paradigms and direction of the proposed reforms before they are implemented and monitored for successes. And that begins with this monthly seminar series as one of the measured mechanisms that will restore the lost glory of the Commission.