From Okwe Obi, Abuja
Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission, Prof. Tunji Olaopa, has decried what he described as compromise of meritocracy in the civil service.
Olaopa, who made the assertion when the Yobe State Civil Service Commission Chairman, Hamidu Alhaji, visited him in Abuja, lamented that civil servants have surrendered constitutional independence to the whims and caprices of political lord and masters.
According to him, Nigeria’s civil service currently demonstrates what he called “palpable evidence of the worst kinds of bureaucratic corruption largely due to institutional weaknesses” that enable officers to exploit systemic loopholes.
“We have compromised merit not just on the altar of federal character diversity management praxis. We did in the way we submit our constitutional independence helplessness to the whims and caprices of our political lord and masters, largely because, as professionals, we have lost the capacity to speak truth to power as it was in Nigeria in the 1960s through to the mid-70s.
“We have emasculated merit and replaced it with political patronage and an unreflective nepotism.
“The dynamic that this created, has inexorably destroyed the gatekeeping essence of the Commission’s constitutional mandate as the protector and defender of the merit system, and therefore as the institutional bulwark and guarantor of professionalism in policy and development management.
“It has also almost irreparably destroyed competency-based human resource management as enabler of policy intelligence of a capable developmental state.
“Even the British who transplanted the service commission concept, along with many countries in the Commonwealth of Nations, have brought creativity and innovations to bear in their public service people management practices and therefore, in how far they have gone in rethinking their service commissions.
“Consulting firms, external policy experts, and think tanks, that should complement our work, are taking over our core functions, due to low institutional capability readiness of MDAs, and we are carried away by our empty held powers as accounting officers and chief administrative officers.”
He, however, noted that “the FCSC is carefully putting together and activating a new set of ideas, strategies, instruments and innovations that we will begin to share with state civil service commissions and other service commissions in the public sector in due course.
“The 2024 conference of the national council of civil service commission will provide one platform for sharing and learning. While the national conference of the civil service commission at 70 to hold later in the year will be another platform.
“So much is expected of us, as if public administration fails, all else in the entire ensemble of the machinery of state will perform sub-optimally, which is another term for failure.”
On his part, Alhaji said: “In Yobe State, there has never been an embargo in employment. Recently, the executive governor approved of 2 persons per ward. We have 178 wards. 5 diploma holders, five NCE, HND and B.Sc holders.”