Obi Nwakanma
14 September 2008
opinion
PRESIDENT Umar Yar'Adua resumed this week after his "hejira" to Jeddah with some dramatic changes in his government.
The first order of business was the removal of Mr. Babagana Kingibe as the powerful Secretary to the Federal Government. Yar'Adua has appointed Ahmed Yayale, from the Ministry of Defence where he was recently minister, to replace him.
Mr. Yayale comes with years of bureaucratic experience, having served in the past as head of the Federal Civil Service.
A few Nigerians would recall that there was such a time when the Secretary to the Federal Government was also the Head of Service. But in one of his numerous tweaking of the civil service, General Ibrahim Babangida, separated the offices, and made the head of service an autonomous office.
I personally think the old system was by far more efficient. It made for a more organic, more coherent, more purposive service if the chief secretary - that is the secretary of state as he was once called - was also the head of the permanent secretaries.
I watched the civil service of my father's generation gradually give way to the decay and implosion that currently characterises the Nigerian public service. From the time of the Notitia Dignitatum, to the current era, state bureaucracies have remained the fundamental organisation for the effective administration of any state.
That branch of government always constitutes the organic, intellectual, and administrative arm of the public sector, whose mission has also been to provide the framework for the permanent bureaucracy of state.
Typically in the UK, whose service provides the traditional frame for the Nigerian civil service, the civil service is remunerated from the civil list. Nigerian civil service is in many ways a chip off the block of the old colonial service.
There was such a time when the "mandarins" of the Nigerian service, those so-called "super permanent secretaries" held the fate of the state. They were products of a highly self-aware service; a bureaucracy which saw itself as entwined with the progress of the state, and which admitted the best that the nation produced in its finest hour. There is, to date in societies that still take themselves very seriously, a highly selective civil bureaucracy.
The civil service is indeed typically, highly selective. It recruits its staff strictly on merit after a very competitive civil service examination. For instance, the civil service still competes with industry elsewhere to recruit the best candidates coming out of the universities.
Frequently, the civil service raids industry to recruit, and the point is simple: the state requires a highly select body of administrators to provide the brain thrust of the public service delivery system. The Nigerian service, at some point, could claim such a mission too.
From 1957, when that first group of Nigerian university-trained young men were recruited directly to the administrative service, the Nigerian civil service tried to establish a tradition whose aim was to transform post-colonial Nigeria into the black power house. Many of us grew up hearing about the potential of Nigeria as "the black super power."
A number of setbacks and reforms has since made that dream unrealistic. Nigerians no longer in fact, dream or care about being a "black super power," they have been reduced simply to the most pragmatic of aspirations: a little meal on the table, a little security, a few hours of light everyday, possibly at night, enough to put on the fan to lull them to the restless sleep of a hot Lagos night, and a little security. In the past, the greatest insecurity to the Nigerian was "Wetin You Carry?" and the
"Highway Robber." Today, it is the kidnapper, the militant, and the PDP. Anyway, the Nigerian civil service, like all the institutions created to make Nigeria a nation of great dreamers, went into coma together with the dream.
One of the greatest problems with the Nigerian civil service, in any case, is the reduction of the value of the public sector as the primary institution for the delivery of social services. Since the era of privatization and the rise of the private sector as the new domain of economic wisdom and profit, the public service has become more or less an oxymoron, if not an anachronism.
That is why Umar Yar'Adua's recent changes seem completely at odds with the general direction and purpose of his government, his party, and their aims. The recent expansion of the bureaucracy of the Federal Government continues to raise questions about the direction of this government.
The most surprising and possibly most controversial of the changes announced by the president this week is the creation of the Ministry for the Niger-Delta. I would have been quite satisfied if I thought that a creation of the ministry dedicated to the Niger-Delta would solve the problems, or that the expansion of the Federal Government from 26 ministries to 28 manned by 42 ministers, would bring succour to "ordinary" Nigerians.
But no. The expansion of the bureaucracy is once more, another gig for the boys. It would mean more bloated contracts. More waste of money for estacode, ministerial entertainment, special interests, foreign official tours to study how "other deltas are dealing with their environmental situations," consultancies, and other administrative costs. In short, it would be another avenue for the mandarinate to exercise its greed. As it has always been in Nigeria that more money is spent administering than delivering services to the Nigerian end-users.
The Ministry of the Niger-Delta would not be different. To start with, its mission statement is fuzzy. It is true that the Niger-Delta Commission has never been effective, the problem is typically because of the top-down structures that have always been used to respond to the Niger-Delta situation. I basically think that this Ministry for the Niger-Delta is a mistake.
The alternative is really simple: to use other established government bureaucracies to respond to the issues of the Niger-Delta than to create a new ministry, which would have an entire bureaucracy, that would be no less remote from the realities of the Niger-Delta than all the other government programmes in the past. Of a different interest to me also is the decision to expand the number of ministries.
Frankly, if the president would listen, I would suggest a smaller and efficient number of ministries. I would abolish the Ministry of Information and National Orientation for instance. It is a needless and redundant ministry.
When the Ministry of Information and Research was established in 1957 under Kola Balogun, its charge was different: it was to be the nucleus of the formation of Nigeria's intelligence services and the foundation of what was then conceived as the Nigerian Council modelled after the British Council.
The foundational mission of that ministry has since changed to its current role as the press release office of the government.
If all a ministry does is to distribute government propaganda, it is hardly worth its value in establishment because the Federal Government can retain the office of the Directorate of the Federal Information Service under the Secretary of state.
The only way a Federal Ministry of Information and Research would make sense is to revert to its original conception in 1957.
I would merge the Ministry of Education and Culture. This is vital because culture and education are, or ought to be seamlessly interwoven. I do not by culture, of course, mean the reductive term to which that expression has been put.
I mean the organisation of public libraries, art foundations; the endowment for writers and artists; the preservation of national artifact and heritage sites, museums and galleries, and the uses to which these can be put in Nigeria's public education.
For instance, the disconnection between Nigeria's public education and the teaching of art, music, and the entire cultural environment is clearly producing a nation of philistines. Education and culture often go hand-in hand. I would merge the Ministry of Police Affairs with the Ministry of Justice.
I would collapse the Ministry of Women, Youth Development and Sports into the Ministry of Health and Human Services. And so on and so forth. Ultimately, the bloating of the Federal bureaucracy, the president admits, is to accommodate the "federal character."
It does not of course matter, whether this serves the highest interest of the nation or not: there must simply be jobs for the boys. In this, I think, the president has erred.
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