NESG: Experts call for massive reforms in civil service

Experts have called for  comprehensive reforms in the civil service to make  it more efficient, effective and results oriented to drive government development policies in order to transform the Nigerian economy.

 This was the crux of the second plenary session of the two- day Nigeria Economic Summit, organised by the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG),which commenced in Abuja on Monday.

One of the panelists,Tunji Oloopa, a professor of Public Administration, lamented that the crisis that hit the civil service started when the nation balkanized from four regions in 1966 to the 36 states that the nation now has, which bloated the service to about 600% because of the oil revenue.

“Between 1966 and 1970, Nigeria’ regional structure multiplied from 4 to 12, later 19, later to 21 and now 36 states. The federal civil service in terms of institutional expansion grew  by 600% from what it was in 66.”

 He said that it was at that time that the nation needed to have done institutional rationalisation but the successive military regimes avoided the much needed reforms for fear of labor labour union backlash but instead compounded by sidetracking the civil service and were creating their own structures, which created parallel civil service.

He lamented because the military refused to downsized the service by 1999, 70% of federal expenditure was going to overhead.

He urged all stake holders to change the service for the better, saying “We need to get the basics of the public service right. Let me tell you as an insider, except for few agencies that have reformers who utilised knowledge  to  initiate what we call in literature pockets of effectiveness, for example what Akunyili did in NAFDAC and what Ifako did in FIRS, in the mainstream civil service there are still issues.

” So we need to do a functional review and basic house keeping to reestablish the basic management system in each MDAs. The truth is no MDA has the management system to respond to the need to strategy of change.

“MDA need to be allied to a set of strategies. We need to do a capability review of all the public service in order to look at structural hindrances working against performance.

“Lastly we need to do productivity audit because  a lot of processes, a lot of expenditure heads are in the MDAs,” he said.

He said further that Nigeria needs to change the bureaucratic model to business model adding that Nigeria needs systematic injection of skill into the public service.

“There must be job evaluation, comprehensive level of management analysis to regrade the entire federal job.

“We cannot be protecting federal officers we know bought certificate in the market place. Professionalism and culture change is required at this time,” he added.

The founder of Africa Initiative for Governance, AigbojeAig Immoukhuede, while making his contributions at the panel session, said ” reforms require a number human character one of which is courage “. He called for support and investment in the critical areas to assist Nigeria transform its governance structure, education and civil service.

Ifako, who initiated far- reaching and successful reforms in the Federal Inland Revenue Service, (FIRS) noted that  it was about productivity and discipline.” She stressed that  reforms should be allied to the circumstances that are needed at any point in time.  She noted that her reform efforts in the FIRS did not happen over night but through hard work and determination.

Innocent Odoh, Abuja