1. Introduction and Context          

“Kabiyesi [Your Royal Highness], I don’t want to say this in front of you, but Osun [one of Nigeria’s 36 states, with a population of 3.5 million people] is not as rich as I am that I would want to steal from it. I only want to help this state.” – Bola Ahmed Tinubu (former Governor of Lagos State).[1]

A ‘selfie’ is a photograph that one has taken of oneself. In this discussion on State Capture, I have used the term ‘Selfie State’ to refer to a situation in which the State has managed, through a variety of institutions, to engineer its own capture. The terms “Institutions” and “Organisation” are often used interchangeably. I will be using the term “Institutions” to mean “the rules of the game in a society” (North, 1990). Essentially, institutions are the way things are done in a society. They are the formal and informal rules that are accepted by members of society, enforced for compliance and passed on to new members of society through socialisation and education. On the other hand, I will be using the term “organisations” to refer to groups of people intentionally organised to achieve set goals (McNamara, 1999).

The term “state capture” was probably first used in the World Bank Policy Research Working Paper titled ‘Measuring Governance, Corruption, and State Capture.’[2] The paper describes state capture as “the efforts of firms to shape and influence the underlying rules of the game (i.e. legislation, laws, rules and decrees) through private payments to public officials.’ It posits that state capture thrives when the state is unable to reign in its bureaucracy, to protect property and contractual rights, and to provide institutions that support the rule of law. While the World Bank paper focuses on firms, the Public Affairs Research Institute (PARI) paper ‘Betrayal of the Promise: How South Africa is Being Stolen’[3] describes state capture more broadly as a systematic and well organised way of “accessing and redirecting rents away from their intended targets into private hands.”

The concept of self-capture is a variation of the state capture concept as set out by the World Bank and the Public Affairs Research Institute. The PARI paper sets out an elaborate structure of state capture, with a strongman ‘controller’ that sits above the elite. In a ‘selfie state’, there are several controllers, each protected by social, cultural, historical and political institutions, many of which appear to have initially come into being for altruistic reasons but have since being hijacked for personal gain. More paradoxically, the state has also reserved for the main beneficiaries of the captured system the exclusive power to change these institutions, if they wish. As turkeys tend not to vote for Christmas, the state has wittingly or unwittingly captured itself in a grotesque ‘selfie.’ We will explore what forms this takes, using Nigeria as a case study. We will also explore what, if anything, can be done about it.

I will consider state capture in the selfie state using four concepts: access to the trappings of power; legitimate abuse of public office; patronage, and “stepping out of office into power.

• Prisoners of War

The military has ruled Nigeria for about half of its existence as an independent nation. With a long history of military coups and a devastating civil war in the 1960s, the current democratic dispensation is the longest unbroken period of civilian rule in Nigeria’s history. Nigeria’s Land Use Act 1978, promulgated as a decree by the then military government but still in use today, vests all land in each Nigerian state in the Governor of that state. Since the beginning of organised society, the importance of control over land has been paramount. In Rosseau’s Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, he traced the establishment of civil society to “The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say ‘This is mine’ and found people simple enough to believe him” (Rousseau, [1754], 2004). Control over land probably accounts for more wars than any other factor. From ancient times, control over land often meant the difference between survival and starvation (Harari, 2011).

Through the instrument of the Land Use Act, Nigeria handed over control of this most important economic resource to anybody that could attain the position of governor of a state. The powers of the governor over land are virtually unfettered. All land in Nigeria is on a 99-year lease that is granted and revoked at the pleasure of the Governor. It is possible to go to court for improper revocation but the judiciary is slow, with civil cases taking an average of 10 years to determine. The Governor decides who gets land for any purposes and how much they should pay for it. The Governor is able to forcibly take any land “in the public interest” and use state resources to pay compensation to any previous lessor, where necessary. How “public interest” is defined is malleable and what may at first appear to be public interest tends to eventually morph into personal interest. Any exchange of land among citizens can only be done with the consent of the Governor. There are no clear rules against a Governor allocating land to himself or his family members and close business associates. Corruption is punishable but abuse of power is not.

State capture in this sense then is very physical in nature. For anybody that is able to become the Governor of a state, it provides access to instant wealth and control over the economic lives of all citizens. With the Land Use Act, the military essentially subjugated property rights over land to the barrel of the gun. Given the nature of land, any disposition of ownership brings economic gain to the land owner. In turn, economic power provides access to political owner. The expropriation of wealth that comes from this control over landed property can be perpetuated for generations, especially when the legal system is ineffective and the judiciary is insufficiently independent to curtail state predation (Besley, 2006).

As part of my research for this paper, I conducted a poll on Twitter on 18^th September, 2018 on my Twitter handle @DrJoeAbah. I asked: “Who are the real owners of Nigeria? Who, if any, really holds the remote control?” I gave 4 options: Retired Military Generals; Politicians; Traditional Rulers; or Powerful Businessmen. A total of 9,555 people voted in the poll over a 24-hour period. 55% of those that voted chose ‘Retired Military Generals.’ Perhaps unlike the case outlined about South Africa in ‘Betrayal of the promise: how South Africa is being stolen’ (PARI, 2017), ‘Politicians’ (the equivalence of the Zumas of South Africa) got 33%, and ‘Powerful Businessmen’ (the equivalence of the Guptas in South Africa) only got 10% of the votes. Of course, one accepts the limitations of social media polls in academic research. However, the poll has been necessary in explaining the concept of self-capture in the selfie state. As the Russian painter, Wassily Kandinsky, once said of methodology, “All means are sacred which are called for by the inner need. All means are sinful which obscure that inner need” (Kandinsky, 1997).

It is instructive that Nigeria returned to democratic rule in 1999, nearly 20 years ago, and that of the four Presidents Nigeria has had since then, two have been retired military generals. By 2019 when Nigeria’s current democracy would be 20 years old, retired military generals would have been in power for 12 years (60% of that period).  In the 40 years since the existence of the Land Use Act, there has been no serious attempt to repeal or amend it. At the return to democracy in 1999, this control over land was simply handed over from the military directly to those that the military supported for public office. In the democratic dispensation, the state Governor, whoever that becomes, now has control over landed property rights. As if the Land Use Act itself was not enough, Nigeria’s supreme law, the 1999 Constitution, expressly validates the 1978 Act. The legislature has the power to make, amend and repeal laws but changing the Constitution is tortuously difficult. To amend the Nigerian Constitution, Section 9(2) requires the support two-thirds majority of all the members in the House of Assembly and the Senate, as well as support by two-thirds of the legislature of all 36 states.

The capture of the key economic resource of land backed, by legislation and validated by the Constitution is, therefore, the first example of a selfie state. In ‘The Origins of Political Order’, Francis Fukuyama extensively discusses the importance of land over the course of history, ranging from tribal societies, to the ambition of communists to control all means of production (particularly land), through to the assertion by modern neo-classical economists that strong property rights is the source of long-term economic growth (Fukuyama, 2012). He concludes his discourse by blaming many of Africa’s current dysfunctions on the failure of Westerners (particularly European colonial officials) to understand the nature of customary property rights in Africa. With the Land Use Act, 1978, Nigeria achieved what many socialists like Franz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah and Amilcar Cabral feared the most: the new African leadership simply stepping into the shoes of the departing colonial bourgeois (Fanon, 1963).

The ‘beauty’ of the selfie taken by the selfie state is that state capture in this sense is institutionalised, completely legal and even Constitutional, and that the state has made it virtually impossible to change. In the next section, we will look at the effects and consequences of the Nigerian Constitution, bequeathed by the military to the civilian government, on state capture.

• Born in Chains

The aim of every political Constitution, is or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust (Madison, [1788], 1961).

Jean-Jacques Rousseau begins his seminal treatise The Social Contract with the dramatic words “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains” (Rousseau, 1998). Being that the military bequeathed to Nigeria the Constitution it still operates today, it is debatable whether or not Nigeria’s democracy was indeed born free. The sincerity of the opening lines of that Constitution, “We the people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria […] do hereby make, enact and give to ourselves the following Constitution”, has relentlessly been hotly disputed. Most of the current debates around the need to “restructure” Nigeria have focused on the need for Constitutional reform. 

Nigeria is a federation consisting of a federal government, 36 state governments and 774 local governments. The federal government is large and overbearing, consuming 52% of all revenue, with 36 states sharing 28% and 774 local governments taking 20%. With every successive Constitution since independence in 1960, the Federal Government has taken more and more power to itself. The Nigerian Constitution vests control of all minerals, mineral oils and natural gas in the Federal Government. Of all these resources, the most important is oil. Nigeria is the 6^th largest producer of crude oil in the world and the largest in Africa.[4] Since the discovery of oil in Nigeria in 1956, petroleum revenue has contributed between 50% and 90% of Nigeria’s total revenue.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is opaque in its operations. Although Nigeria’s Freedom of Information Act 2011 clearly places an obligation of disclosure on any organisation “supported in whole or in part by public funds or which expends public funds”, the NNPC has consistently refused to honour Freedom of Information requests, without consequence. The NNPC can indeed be described as a supra-state organisation that decides, solely out of its own benevolence, how much to contribute to government coffers. The Nigeria Extractive Transparency Initiative (NEITI) reports that the NNPC has not been able to explain what it did with $22.7 billion revenue that it collected over a 15-year period.[5] NEITI has no powers to make NNPC account for the money. It appears that no one has. That a state-owned corporation can owe the state $22.7 billion (more than the Federal Government’s entire budget for 2017), and there is little appetite by the state to stop it from happening, is symptomatic of state capture in a selfie state.

It is usual for Nigerian Presidents to double as the country’s Minister of Petroleum. Control over NNPC, therefore, vests in whoever is the President of Nigeria at any point in time. The wide discretionary powers that the President has also means that it is within his gift to award oil exploration blocks. An oil exploration block is a large expanse of land awarded to oil drilling and exploration companies (and sometimes to individuals) by the government of an oil producing country. When former Nigeria dictator Sanni Abacha allocated his friend, Theophilus Danjuma, an oil exploration block in the Niger Delta, Danjuma immediately sold the allocation paper for $1 billion, dutifully paying tax of $500 million and retaining $500 million as profit. He is currently estimated by Forbes to be worth over $1 billion.[6] In 1993, Folorunso Alakija, the favourite fashion designer of the wife of the former President, was awarded a 617,000-acre oil block. Today, as a result, she is one of the richest black women in the world, with a net worth estimated at $1.7 billion.[7]

If a Nigerian Head of State is perfectly within his legal rights to grant a piece of paper worth $1 billion to a friend or to his wife’s seamstress, the level of resources that he and his family members have legitimate access to can only be imagined. Here, the institutions of the state capture the country’s natural resources and willingly hands it over to anybody that can rise to the position of President to dispense as he pleases. As Thomas Hobbes once wrote:

The greatest of human powers, is that which is compounded of the powers of most men, united by consent, in one person, natural or civil, that has the use of all their powers depending on his will…” (Hobbes, 2008).

Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution gives the legislature the powers to appropriate funds and pass budgets. Indeed, Section 80(4) of the Constitution says that no money can be spent “except in the manner prescribed by the National Assembly.” The intention of this provision of the Constitution was to make the Executive arm of government accountable to the elected representatives of the people in the management of public funds. As is often the case in situations of state capture, this noble intention has been directed towards private, pecuniary gain. While Nigerian Senators only earn an official salary of $55,000 per annum and Members of the House of Representatives earn $42,000 per annum, one of the Senators has admitted that each Senator receives an additional $450,000 per annum to spend as “running costs.” He explained that there is no specification as to what the money is meant for and that Senators are merely required to provide receipts.[8] The funds for the National Assembly is a first-line charge that comes straight out of the treasury, with no control by the Executive.

The National Assembly has simply used its Constitutional powers of appropriation to take from the government treasury what it wants to take, simply because it can. The legislature makes the laws, so nobody is in a position to change the practice. This is state capture perhaps in its crudest from, directly from the treasury without any agents, brokers, dealers or any sort of middleman. This is the selfie state at its clearest, when the state has unwittingly designed a checks-and-balances system that has now been used to capture the state for personal gain.

• Jobs for The Boys

Nigeria runs a Presidential system of government, with an Executive, a bicameral legislature and a relatively-independent judiciary. The Constitution empowers the legislature to make laws and to approve certain appointments made by the executive. In most cases when a law is made, a government agency that will implement that law is created as part of the Act. Agencies are created for several reasons. Some are created to focus on certain functions of a technical nature that may not properly be delivered through the generalist structure and personnel of the mainstream civil service, for instance, a food and drug administration agency. At other times, agencies are created because a function of state is not working as well as it should and government desires a new body with greater autonomy and powers that it does not want to confer on the existing delivery agent. At yet other times, governments, particularly in developing countries, create agencies in order to give the public the impression that they are tackling an identified problem. There are also occasions when agencies are created as a result of international, continental, regional or bilateral reasons. A good example of an agency created as a result of a continental initiative is the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) agency.   

Very often, the creation of agencies is a convenient way for government to avoid taking the hard decisions that reforms often entail. In many developing countries, existing agencies are hardly ever scrapped when new ones are created. This leads to a constant rise in the cost of governance. In both democratic and autocratic governments around the world, and in both high-income and low-income countries, the cost of governance has grown remarkably over the last 50 years (Besley, 2006). Concerned about this, the Nigerian government instituted the ‘Oronsaye Committee’ review which identified 541 agencies of government in 2011. It recommended the scrapping of some and the merger of others but successive governments have lacked the political will to implement the recommendations. Instead of reducing the number of agencies and government expenditure on them, the Federal Government of Nigeria created even more. In May 2015, the Nigerian Minister for Finance admitted that the country was borrowing to pay the salaries of Federal government employees.[9] As at 2018, the Budget Office of the Federation was having to make provision for more than 1,100 government organisations in the Federal budget.

While there are often genuine reasons for creating new agencies, corrupt and prebendal governments also use agency creation as an avenue for patronage for members of the elite (Abah, 2016). Every new agency has to be staffed. The politician uses this avenue to secure employment for family members, friends and political loyalists, and will use their influence to ensure that staff of the new agency earn more than anybody currently delivering a similar function, thereby distorting pay relativity. They will also use their influence to secure a hefty take-off grant, from which they would expect to benefit in terms of contracts. Perhaps most importantly, they will influence who becomes the head of the agency, ensure that the person is aware of their influence in securing her appointment and effectively become her ‘controller.’

Members of the National Assembly, Nigeria’s legislature, have another reason to create new agencies. For political reasons, it is important for them to say that they have “attracted development” to their constituency. Therefore, there is frequent clamour in the National Assembly for the creation of yet another new university, college of education or institute, despite the fact that one already exists within a 5-mile radius, which government is unable to adequately fund. As agencies are created by law and the National Assembly has the Constitutional powers to make laws, and as it is often in their pecuniary, familial and political interests to create agencies, an important, expensive and influential aspect of state administration has effectively been captured in the selfie state. While the executive arm of government can merge and demerge ministries, they cannot do anything with agencies without amending the laws setting them up. Those laws cannot be amended without the National Assembly that created them in the first place. The National Assembly has no incentive to amend them and will use the emotive issue of potential job losses if the agencies were to be scrapped to counter any moves by the executive to streamline agencies. The resilience of these sorts of patronage systems are well documented in Merilee Grindle’s Jobs for the Boys (Grindle, 2012).      

• Stepping Out of Office into Power

I have said it before and I will say it again, Asiwaju (Leader) Bola Ahmed Tinubu stepped out of office into power (Ismaeel Ahmed, 2018).[10]

Stepping out of office and into power is a very apt description of the influence that only the crème de la crème of public office holders in Nigeria are able to achieve. The politician to whom this quote refers, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, was the Governor of Lagos State, Nigeria’s richest state in GDP terms, from 1999 to 2007. Since leaving office, he has become the sole kingmaker in Lagos, with the seeming exclusive power to determine who becomes Governor and who doesn’t, who represents Lagos State in the National Assembly and who is appointed into public office in Lagos State, including the Governor’s cabinet. He also enjoys the total loyalty of the State House of Assembly, having handpicked all the members, which gives him the power to facilitate the impeachment of any Lagos Governor if and when he wants to.

Tinubu is the same person that declared that he was personally richer than a neighbouring state of 3.4 million people with a GDP of $7.28 billion. Using his total control over Lagos politics and his stupendous wealth, Tinubu has kept successive Lagos Governors on a very tight leash. He has even been strong enough to determine that the incumbent Governor of Lagos State, Akinwunmi Ambode, should not seek a second term in office in 2019, on the basis that he “deviated from the masterplan” that he, Tinubu, crafted for the state. After initially attempting to resist, Ambode, facing immediate impeachment, caved in and surrendered the party’s gubernatorial ticket for 2019 to Tinubu’s preferred candidate. Having captured Lagos State, Tinubu’s influence extends to all the 6 states in southwestern Nigeria, hence his prominent role in the elections of neighbouring Osun state during which he made the statement about being richer than the state.

Beyond the southwest, it was the coalition that Tinubu created, which became the All Progressives Congress that was able to wrest power from the People’s Democratic Party that had been in power at the national level in Nigeria for 16 years. He successfully engineered the circumstances that led to the then President, Goodluck Jonathan, losing at the polls in 2015. It is the first time that an incumbent President and ruling party has lost power at the national level in Nigeria.

How do step out of being a state Governor into the kind of power, wealth and influence that Tinubu has been able to amass? We will now attempt to answer this question by bringing together some of the strands of self-capture that we had previously discussed.

Lagos is Nigeria’s smallest state in terms of landmass. The value of Lagos land is very high, with indigenes often saying that land is Lagos’s equivalent of oil. To make things even more interesting, oil has recently been discovered in Lagos. Being the former capital of Nigeria, Lagos inherited the infrastructure of a federal capital, no matter how inadequate. Its location at the shores of the Atlantic Ocean means that it has lagoons, bays and marinas that naturally attract the very rich to its waterfront properties. Lagos is home to 4 out of the 10 most expensive property locations in Nigeria, with a 5-bedroom house in Banana Island, the most expensive part, costing nearly $3 million on average.[11] The Land Use Act 1978 gives exclusive control over all the land in Lagos to the Governor of Lagos State. Bola Ahmed Tinubu was the Governor of Lagos State for 8 years, from 1999 to 2007, giving him control over this key economic resource in the location in which it had the most value in all of Nigeria. He has also had the power to choose and control his successors in office since stepping out of office.

Tinubu controls who represents Lagos State at the National Assembly at federal level. Despite some murmurings, he was able to get the people of Lagos to vote in his wife, Oluremi, as one of Lagos State’s Senators at the national level. His control over the Lagos State legislature is total. As soon as he decided that the incumbent Governor of Lagos State should not run for a second term, all the members of the State House of Assembly, as well as all Local Government Chairmen in the state, immediately swore their allegiance to Tinubu’s preferred candidate for the next election. This gave a clear signal to the incumbent Governor that he risked impeachment if he did not bend to Tinubu’s will. He did.

Lagos is the commercial capital of Nigeria, generating 55% of Nigeria’s Value Added Tax.[12] It is also home to Nigeria’s main sea ports. Although sea ports are Constitutionally the preserve of the Federal government, the inherent economic activity that hosting them generates is significant. The headquarters of virtually all Nigerian banks are in Lagos and the oil industry moved most of its headquarters to Lagos following the Niger Delta crisis in the early 2000s. Lagos is also Nigeria’s main industrial and manufacturing hub. All of these mean that there are sterling opportunities for the Lagos State Government to collect taxes. Recognising this opportunity, Tinubu appointed Alpha Beta Consulting as revenue consultants for Lagos State. A former Chief Executive of the company, now a whistle-blower, said that the company collects 10% of all revenue accruing to Lagos State and has been doing so since 1999.[13] According to Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics, Lagos generated revenues of N334 billion[14] in 2017, more than $1 billion using official exchange rates. 10% of that is $100 million in 2017 alone. Alpha Beta Consulting has been Lagos State’s revenue consultants for 19 consecutive years.

The influence of Alpha Beta Consulting is so pervasive in Lagos that the company was inserted by name into the new Land Use Charge legislation. Following public outcry, the House of Assembly removed the name of the company from the Bill, claiming that it had been inserted in error.[15] Whether or not it was inserted in error, the intention of the State House of Assembly and that of the Lagos State Government is clear, as far as Alpha Beta Consulting is concerned.

By using control over Lagos land for an 8-year period, continuing control over the politics of the state (both Executive and Legislature), control over ‘jobs for the boys’ and a sophisticated patronage system, and allegedly repurposing the state, Bola Ahmed Tinubu was able to step out of office into real power. His ability to do so stems primarily from having being Governor of Lagos State and using the legitimate powers and institutions attached to that status. Although quite influential in determining their successors, former governors of other states have not been able to exert the same kind of influence that Tinubu has. The financial resources available to Lagos State are not available to them. In 2016, Lagos State generated more revenue than 31 of Nigeria’s 36 states combined.[16] As Bola Ahmed Tinubu comes closest to the concept of ‘Controller’ set out in the PARI paper, I wonder whether as a defined geographical region becomes richer, it lends itself more to state capture in the South African sense. Until then, state capture in Nigeria is a lot more diverse.

• Conclusions, Recommendations and Next Steps

The concept of self-capture is a variation on the state capture concept more widely known in the literature. Many authors (Crabtree and Durand, 2017; Edwards, 2017; Kaufmann and Vicente, 2005; and World Bank, 2000) use the term state capture to describe a situation where companies, drug cartels, oligarchies or other non-state actors essentially buy advantage by corrupting public officials. In the South African version, as set out in State of Capture[17] and in the PARI 2017 paper, the head of government uses his powers to recruit a company or a group of companies that helps to redirect state resources for private benefit. In a self-capture situation, what I refer to as the ‘selfie state’, the state itself, through weak institutions, has managed to engineer its own capture without relying on any external agents. Because self-capture is state engineered, the nature of state capture in a ‘selfie state’ shows a lot more plurality and diversity. Perversely, state capture in a selfie state can indeed be seen as an objective that virtually any citizen can aspire to, simply by getting into public office.

In the case of Nigeria, its Constitutional, legal, political and societal institutions have effectively captured the state, just waiting for anybody that gets into public office to take advantage. Control over the key economic resource of land; weaknesses in, and abuse of, Constitutional provisions; supra-state organisations like the state-owned oil company; control of a pervasive and entrenched patronage system; and access to large amounts of cash, all provide legitimate but perhaps immoral means through which government officials can step out of office and step into real power.

Changing institutions is tortuously difficult. Weak institutions and ‘path dependence’ tend to persist and are notoriously resistant to change (Grindle, 2012; Acemoglu and Robinson, 2012; Besley, 2006). However, it is possible to overcome the fatalism of institutional theory, forge new paths and force the creation of new institutions. In the case of Nigeria, it seems to me that the starting point must be the formulation of a new Constitution that truly represents the wishes of “We the people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.” In 2014, a year before the general elections, the Federal Government put in place a Constitutional Conference that sought to tackle a number of institutional difficulties in the current Constitution. Many viewed it as a political gimmick targeted at gaining electoral advantage. The new government that took over power in 2015 has refused to even look at the conference report, consider its recommendations, or organise its own conference. The current ruling party did set up a “restructuring committee” but not much has been heard about its work since it submitted its report.

The amendments that the legislature has made to the Constitution have largely been in those areas that affect and benefit its members directly. Examples of such amendments include the one that makes the Senate President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives members of the Council of State; ensuring that the funding of State Houses of Assembly is a first-line charge on the treasury; and providing immunity for legislators for words spoken as part of their legislative duties. There has been no attempt to amend those sections of the Constitution that facilitate state capture. Despite occasional rhetoric, there appears to be an absence of political will on the part of the Executive or the Legislature to change the current Constitution.

Given the absence of political will by both the Executive and Legislature to seek Constitutional change, what options are citizens left with? Out of frustration, many Nigerians are drawn towards what Douglas North calls “discontinuous change”, a radical change in the formal rules as a result of revolution (North, 1990). However, as North points out, broad-based support for violent action requires a shared commitment to an ideological position. That shared ideological reasoning is lacking in Nigeria and many developing countries.

Where there is no political will to change institutions and discontinuous change is unlikely, can pressure by citizens be effective? In society, it is clear that there is a constant push and pull between what is desired and what is allowed to happen. What is not so clear is at what threshold certain pressure will trigger institutional change (Abah, 2012). This is why our approach here must necessarily be explanatory, rather than predictive. In ‘The Logic of Collective Action’ (Olsen, 1975), Mancur Olsen looked at various possible sources of pressure, e.g. labour groups, professional bodies and business lobbies. In Nigeria, a possible additional source of pressure will be faith-based organisations. Unfortunately, labour groups are only concerned with increases in wages, professional bodies have become heavily politicised (an accounting body recently endorsed the incumbent President for the 2019 elections[18]), businesses are heavily reliant on government for patronage, and faith-based organisations appear to be more interested in miraculous prosperity than institutional change.

Olsen goes on to make the sobering point that large or latent groups (“those who suffer in silence”) have no tendency voluntarily to act to further their own common interests. While the need to “restructure” Nigeria’s governance systems is paramount in the minds of most people, there is no coordinating mechanism to bring it about. One way could be to make it the key election issue in 2019, thereby forcing all aspirants to power to at least promise to address it. Tony Blair remains perhaps the only world leader to have fought and won elections on the promise of public service reforms (Barber, 2007). While there are no guarantees that campaign promises will be delivered when people eventually get into office, a President may feel the weight of expectation sufficiently for them to want to fulfil a campaign promise, just like David Cameron did with ‘Brexit.’

The only option left would be to await the happy accident of an activist President coming to power, without the elite initially being aware that he will bring about disruptive or discontinuous change. That change will need to be protected from what Pranab Bardhan calls “infant mortality of reforms” (Bardhan, 1984). The best protection for the reformer is not the elite but the public. Those who suffer in silence.  

References

Abah, J., (2012), Strong Organisations in Weak States, Boekenplan, Maastricht

• (2016), Pockets of Effectiveness in Nigerian Public Service and Lessons for Accelerating National Development, in Adamolekun, L., (2016), Essays on Public Management, Gender and Sub-National Governments, Caligata.

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Bardhan, P., (1984), The Political Economy of Development in India, Oxford University Press.

Besley, T., (2006), Principled Agents?: The Political Economy of Good Governance, Oxford University Press.

Crabtree, J. and Durand, F. (2017), Peru: Elite Power and Political Capture, London, United Kingdom: Zed Books Ltd.

Edwards, D., (2017), Corruption and State Capture Under Two Regimes in Guyana, accessed from the internet on 16 October, 2018 at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Duane_Edwards/publication/316608300_Corruption_and_State_Capture_under_two_Regimes_in_Guyana/links/59076cbc4585152d2e9c42ea/Corruption-and-State-Capture-under-two-Regimes-in-Guyana.pdf 

Fanon, F., (1963), The Wretched of the Earth, Penguin Classics.

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Fukuyama, F., (2012), The Origins of Political Order, Profile Books.

Grindle, M., (2012), Jobs for The Boys, Harvard University Press.

Harari, Y., (2011), Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Vintage.

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Madison, J., (1788 [1961]), The Federalist Papers: A collection of Essays in Support of the Constitution of the United States, New York: Doubleday; quoted in Besley, T., (2006), Principled Agents? Oxford University Press.

McNamara, C., (1999), Basic Definition if Organisation, accessed from the internet on 16 October, 2018 at https://managementhelp.org/organizations/definition.htm

North, D., (1990), Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, Cambridge University Press.

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• (1762 [1998]), The Social Contract, Wordsworth Classics of World Literature.

[1] https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/top-news/283237-osundecides-video-i-am-richer-than-osun-state-bola-tinubu.html [parentheses in italics are mine, to interpret language and provide context].

[2] http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTWBIGOVANTCOR/Resources/measure.pdf

[3] PARi (2017), Betrayal of the promise: how South Africa is being stolen, https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Betrayal-of-the-Promise-25052017.pdf

[4] http://www.nnpcgroup.com/nnpcbusiness/upstreamventures/oilproduction.aspx

[5] https://punchng.com/nnpc-has-not-explained-missing-22-7bn-neiti/

[6] https://www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/politician/minister/theophilus-danjuma-net-worth/

[7] https://www.forbes.com/sites/mfonobongnsehe/2018/03/07/the-black-billionaires-2018/#636c88785234

[8] https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/261085-confirmed-nigerian-senators-receive-n13-5-million-monthly-apart-from-salaries.html

[9] https://www.premiumtimesng.com/business/182543-nigerian-govt-borrowing-billions-to-pay-salaries-okonjo-iweala.html

[10] Ismaeel Ahmed is the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Social Investment Programmes. The quote is from his Twitter handle @IsmaeelAhmedB on 2^nd October, 2018.

[11] https://www.privateproperty.com.ng/news/top-10-most-expensive-property-locations-in-nigeria/

[12] https://leadership.ng/2017/08/02/lagos-alone-generates-55-nigerias-vat-adeosun/

[13] https://punchng.com/states-generated-n931bn-igr-in-2017-nbs/

[15] https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2018/03/08/land-use-charge-lagos-assembly-admits-inserting-alpha-beta-in-error/

[16] https://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/05/state-viability-index-lagos-generates-igr-31-states-combined/

[17] https://web.archive.org/web/20170517044807/http://www.pprotect.org/library/investigation_report/2016-17/State_Capture_14October2016.pdf

[18] https://reubenabati.com.ng/index.php/component/k2/item/13864-2019-anan-endorses-buhari

The above statement by Elie Wiesel is the favourite quote of those that insist that everyone in Nigeria must be politically partisan. It is often used to denigrate those that refuse to be drawn into the current political milieu in Nigeria, and to paint them as unconscionable, irresponsible and unpatriotic. This unfair labelling is the action of oppressors and tormentors.

The politics that we practice in Nigeria is not based on ideology, principles or manifestos. Manifestos are often crafted by political strategists for the sole purpose of winning elections. The candidates have zero input into it and are not even aware of what has been promised on their behalf. Our politics is simply two or three cults fuelled by blind adoration and rabid personal hatred. For each cult, the loyalty to adore and to hate is the only membership criterion. It is rather than like membership of rival street gangs. The member of your gang is your “blood” and you will kill to protect them even if they commit rape, murder or genocide. Members of rival gangs are enemies who must die, even though you don’t know them personally and they have never done anything to offend you. Anybody that is not in one of the gangs is seen as a coward.

The political system in Nigeria is a fraud. It is designed to empower a few to oppress and torment the majority. First of all, it is parties that stand for elections, not individuals. If your party chooses not to present you to the electorate, your ambition is over. Of course, there are a number of mushroom parties registered by political jobbers that, for enough cash, will offer you a hopeless opportunity to run on their platform. You go from being a potentially viable candidate of one of the big parties to being a candidate of Obscure Party of Nigeria. Obscure Party of Nigeria has no structures in place on the ground. No ward offices, no party agents, not even a social media presence. Nothing. Your candidature is simply to make a statement that nobody is interested in listening to.

The political parties encourage everyone wishing to seek office to buy a form, often for millions of Naira. The higher the political office you seek, the more expensive it is and the richer the party becomes. The price of the nomination forms is set so high that it automatically excludes virtually all young persons and anybody that gets their money from honest sweat and endeavour. Once forms have been obtained, potential candidates must then go and do obeisance to a political “god” who will decide who and who will contest the primaries and whose nomination form money should be returned to them at this stage.

The primaries themselves are a complete farce. Only people currently in political office can produce delegates. In the days leading up to the convention, the country often experiences a shortage of N1,000 notes. The closer the convention gets, the scarcer Dollars become and the better business gets for people selling the nylon bags commonly called “Ghana-must-go.” The night before the convention, delegates are given their monies in advance (they no longer trust promises to sort them out afterwards) and are told who the political “god” has anointed as the “consensus candidate.”

Those that remain loyal to the political “god” and agree to step down, or agree to run just to create a semblance of a democratic contest, are promised rewards like ministerial appointments or chairmanship of “juicy” boards. Those that are likely to have any sort of political base are offered ambassadorial appointments to get them out of the way, send them to political exile and destroy their political base. Anybody that dares go against the wishes of the political “god” is ridiculed and humiliated. It is only a matter of time before they join a rival gang and the cycle rinses and repeats itself.

Because our Constitution does not allow independent candidature, we are victims of the oppressors. In 19 years of operating this Constitution, there has been no serious movement to ensure that independent candidature is allowed in elections. We are at the mercy of political “gods” and their “delegate system.”

Having gone through the farcical charade of so-called conventions, the parties then present candidates to the electorate. Quite often, the electorate is not enamoured of any of the candidates. It is forced to either choose between the devil and the deep blue sea or forgo the right to vote – a right that many people lost their lives to ensure that we get. Many young people would choose to play football or watch Zee World instead. You can’t really blame them.

The process of casting a vote is tortuously difficult. Movement is restricted. Voters often have to arrive very early in the morning and must plan to stay the whole day in the sun or rain. Postal ballots are not allowed. The prospect of electronic voting is a distant mirage. Of course, election materials will arrive late and voter identification machines will fail to work. Election officers will not arrive until well into the afternoon. It is almost as if we have four days to prepare for elections, not 4 years. Sometimes, you can’t help but wonder whether the chaos is deliberate, given that any project management novice can plan it better.

In other places, advance voting is allowed, in case you are likely to be unable to vote on election day. Postal voting is allowed. In our own system, anybody in a hospital on election day is automatically disenfranchised. Anybody living in the diaspora is automatically disenfranchised. Why people living abroad cannot go to vote in the Nigerian embassy in the country where they live is still a mystery to me.

Let’s now go one step back and talk about the process of registering to vote. That also is tortuously difficult. We run “Continuous Voter Registration” exercises that are certainly not continuous. Those that attempt to register to vote are confronted with the usual issues: no material, no electricity, capturing machine not working and staff not-on-seat. While elections are held on Saturdays, there is no facility to register to vote outside working hours, so those intending to register must take time off work to do so. Many can’t be bothered. You can’t really blame them.

In developed countries, registering to vote takes exactly 5 minutes and can be done completely online. You simply supply your name, address, date of birth and the number of a state-issued means of identification like a national identity number or a passport. That’s all. You get confirmation in the post that you are registered to vote. The voters register is also a public document, searchable by anybody, not the grand mystery that we make our voters register in Nigeria.

Of course, advanced countries are able to do this because they have a credible identity management system. The Netherlands no longer conducts censuses because they know who everyone is and where they are. In Nigeria, our level of discourse is “Name one infrastructure project have you started and commissioned?” versus “I am completing the infrastructure projects that your party abandoned.” There is no emphasis on non-infrastructure projects, like a credible national identification system. The National Identity Management Commission that is driving it is starved or funds and relegated in order of importance to other more “juicy” identification bodies like those of passports and drivers licensing. Their staff are paid basic civil service wages, not the enhanced wages and perks of parastatals and agencies. Nobody seems to care whether they succeed or not. After all, you can’t commission an identification number, can you? Hmmm. I better not put ideas in peoples’ heads.

The current political system we have does not care about harmonised national identification as a prerequisite for national development. The plethora of identification systems we have is simply because people must award contracts and get the attendant benefits therefrom, not because there is any technical reason why we cannot have a credible national identification system. Of course, elections are also easier to manipulate where there is no credible national identification system.

These are some of the reasons why some of us refuse to engage with Nigerian politics as currently designed. No credible national identification system, tortuous voter registration system, tortuous voting process, farcical candidate-emergence system, lack of independent candidature and a Constitution designed to ensure the oppression of the majority by a select minority. You can see that the issue is not about street-gang-like political parties. The issue is the system. It is the system we must fight to change, not trade insults and curses across malleable party-political divides.

So, how do we fight to change the system? We must use a multiplicity of channels. We must continue to fight for a major revision to the 1999 Constitution. Until that Constitution is changed to recognise independent candidature, give primacy to national identity and make it easier to vote, we are at the mercy of the current arrangements. Therefore, we are currently left with no option than to demand of all the current protagonists that they tackle these issues in exchange for our votes. It must be the same request to the parties. If any party makes these promises, wins and doesn’t implement them, we will wait for them at the next elections. Four years fly past far more quickly for politicians than for citizens suffering the pain of a bad system.  

At the best of times, politics is dirty worldwide. Nigerian politics is a filthy pig. As George Bernard Shaw put it, “I learned long ago never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.” I do not feel at all guilty for refusing to engage with it in a partisan party-political way. I prefer to go high. Of course, Elie Wiesel’s statement has been misappropriated to suit a particular erroneous and blinkered narrative. The rest of his quote is often never shown, so let me help us all out. He goes on to say: “Sometimes we must interfere”, and proceeds to set out such instances:

“When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the centre of the universe.”

Therefore, what we must take sides and not be neutral about is the incessant killings going on between herdsmen and farmers in various parts of the country. The side we take should not be for or against herdsmen or farmers. The side we take must be the side that values the sanctity of human life above evil politics that places no premium on human life. We must take side against religious extremism and terrorism. We must take side against discrimination of any sort, including discrimination based on sex, age or disability. We must take side against corruption. We must take side against poor planning and weak project execution. We must take sides against a Constitution designed to oppress the majority. Believe it or not, we must also take sides against the suppression of political views, even in the current dysfunctional arrangement we operate. Those political views that must be protected include choosing, in good conscience, not to participate in partisan politics within the current political arrangements we have, without being crucified for it.

For the avoidance of doubt, we are not sitting on the fence. The fence we currently have has the sole function of keeping gang members in and keeping all non-members out. Instead, we are digging a trench under the fence to get to the foundation of the mansion that the fence is built to protect. Those of us that choose this path are not neutral. We have taken a side: the side that has chosen to fight the current system without being partisan. Those who have chosen to continue to perpetuate the current political system and to denigrate anybody who refuses to join their gang have also taken a side. The battle is not for the faint of heart. May the best side win.

As a frequent traveller, I have noticed that over the last 2 years or so, Immigration Officers are no longer unnecessarily over-friendly. The excessive greeting has stopped, and they no longer ask what you brought back for them when you arrive from out of the country into Lagos or Abuja. Indeed, there are signs at the Lagos Airport providing a phone number for people to report any corruption seen and the Immigration Officers at the beautiful new Abuja Airport now smile and tell you “Welcome back home, Sir” before they stamp you in. Unfortunately, many Nigerians do not easily distinguish between Immigration, Customs, DSS, Quarantine, NDLEA and FAAN personnel and are likely to describe all of them as “Immigration” when they complain. Those that have not travelled since the new changes came into place, particularly Nigerians in diaspora, will still argue forcefully that the practice still goes on. I will return to this issue of the image of the Immigration Service later in this lecture.

The Visa on Arrival scheme is another laudable initiative that has enhanced the ease of doing business, facilitating much-needed foreign investment into the country. My personal experience as the Country Director of an international development company has been very positive in this regard. The biometric visa scheme being rolled out across Nigerian missions abroad is also another initiative worthy of commendation. I have been similarly impressed that Nigerians are now able to contact the Immigration Service through social media and I am pleased to say that the Service has one of the most responsive social media handles in the entire public service. I must pause to recognise the efforts of officers like ACI Amos Okpu and his team and was pleased to have written a letter of commendation to the CGI on the sterling efforts of ACI Okpu in May 2019. In an environment where every public officer is seen as an empty-headed thief, ACI Okpu and his team have distinguished themselves as approachable, polite, professional, helpful and responsive. This is worthy of emulation, not just by others in the Immigration Service, but also by the Nigerian public service in general.

I have also been impressed with the efforts to harmonise identity management by linking the Nigerian passport with the National Identity Number and providing a space in the Immigration Headquarters for the Nigeria Identity Management Commission to aid data integration. Issues remain with the availability of the NIMC database for purposes of harmonisation and the NIMC enrolment system across the country remains difficult, but I am aware that discussions are going on between the Immigration Service and NIMC in this regard. The new polycarbonate passports with up to 10 years validity is also very commendable and I have been made aware of plans to put in place a Passports Plaza at Immigration headquarters.

This does not mean that there are no issues. As Director General of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms, I conducted an informal opinion poll in 2017 asking the public what they were most dissatisfied with when they come into contact with government to obtain official documentation. Top of the list was Passports, followed by Drivers Licences, National Identity Cards and Tax Clearance Certificates. We were able to clear the 6-month backlog with drivers’ licences at the time, encourage NIMC to move from a focus on producing National Identity Cards to emphasising National Identity Numbers, and to welcome the introduction of the electronic tax clearance certificates by the Federal Inland Revenue Service.

We saw some improvements in passport issuance, particularly in foreign missions but not much changed in Nigeria, particularly in Lagos. Complaints about the scarcity of booklets continued, as did claims of Immigration Officers running extortion rackets. Lagos, probably due to its population, had the most complaints while smaller cities like Dutse and Ilorin had fewer complaints. As you know, Lagos controls the media. Whatever is the perception about a service in Lagos is generally taken to be the situation in Nigeria. Lagos, therefore, requires special attention. Interestinly, Kano which also has a large population reported fewer problems.

As much as I have been supportive of the efforts of the Nigerian Immigration Service, I have also been very critical. In May 2019, I wrote an article in BusinessDay newspaper titled ‘How To Get a Nigerian Passport Within One Week Without Paying a Bribe.’ Given the title, many Nigerians flocked to read the article, only to find that it was highly critical of the Immigration Service but suggested ways in which its Passport Service could be improved. The article went as far as suggesting that the Comptroller General was unwilling or unable to do anything to improve the Passport Service. Knowing the Nigerian public service as well as I do, I was actually expecting to experience one or two delays next time I passed through Immigration. I didn’t but I have to say that I was shocked to receive an invitation to speak at this event today.

Having said that, the reaction of my friend, Dr Jumoke Oduwole, Special Adviser to the President on Ease of Doing Business, whose efforts I also criticised with regards to the management of passports, to the article was: “Doc, we hear you loud and clear. We will redouble our efforts. I can assure you that the Comptroller General of Immigration, Mr Mohammed Babandede, is one of the most reform-minded public servants in Nigeria today.” The fact that I have been invited to speak at this event and the warm welcome that I received from the CGI since my arrival in Benin is proof that Dr Oduwole was right about the CGI. As we get into the topic of today’s lecture on improving the process of passport application, payment and issuance, let me quickly say that I will not be upset if the last round of applause you have just offered is the last one I receive until the end of this lecture.

I believe that the issues are clear and are known to most of us here today. Yesterday, I announced on Twitter that I would have the honour of addressing the CGI and his officers and men this morning, and asked Nigerians what they would like me to tell them. Many said I should just tell them what they already know and suggest ways in which they could tackle them. That is precisely what I intend to do in this lecture. The truth of the matter is that when a Nigerian needs a passport, the first thing they do is to ask around whether you know anyone in Immigration. This should not be the case. Public services are meant to be impersonal and predictable. The best example I often give about how the public service should work is with regards to posting a letter. When you want to post a letter, you simply put a stamp on an envelope, drop it in a post box and it is delivered. You don’t need to know anybody. You don’t need to beg anybody. You don’t need to bribe anybody. And you don’t need to “show appreciation” to anybody when your letter is delivered.

The passport application portal is not always available, and it seems to work better on some internet browsers than on others. When it does work, the payment portal is not always reliable. Citizens often have to try multiple times before being able to make payment. This forces citizens to seek contact with Immigration officers, opening the door for allegations of extortion and corruption. I am not also currently aware of any sort of tracking system to inform you about progress with your passport application or to let you know when your passport is ready for collection. The Federal Road Safety Commission has a portal on which you can check whether or not your licence is ready and you receive a text message when it is ready, with details of where to and pick it up from. If it Is possible with Drivers’ Licence applications, it is also possible with passport applications and it should not be difficult to do. To my mind, the biggest constraint to the smooth issuance of passports in Nigeria is human contact with Immigration officers. Once human contact is minimised, the allegations of corruption will fall away drastically.

The issue of non-availability of passport booklets, whether real or contrived, remains the greatest annoyance of Nigerians. There is really no reason why we should have passport shortages now. I am aware that the crash of the Naira and the recession in 2016 made it difficult to continue to pay foreign companies producing the passport booklets at the agreed price in dollars without increasing the cost charged to Nigerians for the booklets. Since then, costs have gone up and the President has directed that passports must now be produced in Nigeria, and given the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company the exclusive right to produce passports when the current contracts with foreign firms expire. If we can print our own money, there is no reason why we should not be able to print our passport booklets. I hope that the Federal Government makes available to resources to the Mint to procure the sophisticated equipment required by the Mint to be able to produce the passport booklets.

In 2007, Nigeria became the first African country to adopt the e-passport, which is recognised for its high level of security around the world. Many Nigerians think that the e-passport booklet is a mere piece of paper that any printer can print. They are not aware that the e-passport is actually a sophisticated piece of security hardware that has a chip embedded within specialised paper. Even the ink and the thread used to stich it together are not items that you will find in the open market. Without revealing unnecessary security information, I believe that the Service can do more to educate Nigerians of this fact. My experience of public service reforms over the last 35 years or so makes it clear to me that it is not enough to carry out reforms. You must also communicate the reforms you are undertaking. The image is as important as the substance and there is often a time lag between when reforms happen and when people actually believe that it is happening. Communication and engagement with the public is key.

Over the past few years, I have heard successive CGIs announce that there are enough passport booklets to go round. This has not been the experience of Nigerians on the street. It is possible that some Immigration Officers are sabotaging the efforts of the CGI and creating artificial scarcity in order to extract corrupt benefits from citizens. I suggest that the Service’s SERVICOM Unit actively encourages Nigerians to report cases where they have been told that there is a scarcity of booklets and that the CGI dedicates a monitoring team to track which passport offices those allegations are emanating from. The monitoring team should also include IT-savvy officers who can monitor the application and payment platforms for downtime or manipulation and report weekly to the CGI himself. Erring officers should be sanctioned as a deterrent to others. A statement by the CGI himself to this effect will go a long way to curb the menace.

Currently, Nigeria does not really have a process of passport renewal, as every passport application is treated as a new application. This means that each time you get a new passport, you need to present yourself again for biometric capture. This is a source of great annoyance for many people. Admittedly, the Drivers License is not as secure as the e-passport but you can renew your drivers’ licence from the comfort of your bedroom by selecting the option to bypass capture. If your biometrics are not in order, you will not be able to bypass capture and may indeed need to take your driving test all over again and go through the process properly. With the data integration with the National Identity Database managed by NIMC, the need to have your biometrics captured again should no longer be there.

If, for security reasons, it remains necessary to have your biometrics captured each time you renew your passport, the Service should put in place a workable appointment system. If you apply for a 5-year passport today, you are likely to get an appointment in 6 years’ time – after the passport you are applying for would have expired. This makes no sense and can be easily fixed. In other countries, you are given 30-minte slots to choose from saying when and where you would like to be captured. If you miss your slot, you would have to book again. If people know when and where to go for capture and are able to do it and leave within 30 minutes, without begging or bribing anyone, the complaints in this regard will dissipate.

I am not unaware that there are often equipment and network issues that mean that the capture process is not always available. As a private citizen now, I am unsympathetic to this, particularly when I am paying the equivalent of $200 for a 64-page 10-year passport and the government is preaching a One Government mantra as part of the Ease of Doing Business regime. Despite the Treasury Single Account, the Immigration Service should negotiate with the Ministry of Finance how to utilise the money citizens pay for passports to ensure a seamless service founded on reliable technology and internet access. The provision of services like passports cannot be subject to the vagaries of fund releases by the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation. I suggest that the Service makes a formal request to the Ministry of Finance in this regard, if it has not already done so, and that where the Ministry of Finance is unwilling or unable to accommodate its peculiar needs, the Service should bring the matter to the attention of Mr President.

There should be clear service standards for passport issuance. Nigerians should be told upfront exactly how long they can expect to wait to get a passport, without begging or bribing anyone. The Immigration Service should regularly publish statistics as to how it is performing against the standards set. When performance is good, the CGI should reward officers. The reward does not have to be monetary. It could be with access to training or official commendations and excellence awards by the CGI.

Related to this, most Nigerians know that you can get a passport within 24 hours if you part with enough money. This is evidence that it is possible to do. Nigerians are notorious for leaving things to the last moment and will only start applying for a passport a few days before they are due to travel. I suggest that the Service puts in place a fast-track service and charges a premium for people that want to use it. Many Nigerians would happily pay a premium to get their passports, officially, within a day or two. Rather than have the money for a premium service go into the pockets of corrupt officers, the money can go officially to the Service, particularly if it has been able to come to an arrangement with the Ministry of Finance on the operation of the Treasury Single Account. As a former public servant, I am acutely aware of the “what is in it for me” syndrome with regards to officers and how to make sure that they do not sabotage the system in order to continue to derive corrupt benefits. One way to tackle this would be to use part of the funds from the fast-track service to pay bonuses to officers. The bonus system should not be limited only to officers that work in the passport service but should form part of a wider incentive scheme that reduces the need to seek illegal funds.

In many passport offices, there are various people milling around who have no business being there. These touts hijack applicants before they even get to see the Immigration Officer. Because the Service does not do anything about this, people conclude, often rightly, that the touts are working on behalf of the Immigration Officers inside. Indeed, a study we conducted while I ran BPSR found that in many cases, each Immigration Officer had their own touts with whom they have a “special relationship.” This is very damaging for the reputation of the Service. Access to Passport Offices should be tightly controlled, right out to the perimeter of the office. Even if touts hang around outside the office, they should have no means of entering the premises. Citizens should be advised that any transactions with anyone not in Immigration uniform is carried out at their own risk. I remember when we piloted access control in the Federal Secretariat a few years ago. For the few days that we carried out the pilot, the Secretariat was like a ghost town. If the piloting had been carried out to full implementation, it would have become much more difficult for people to make the usual claim that the civil service is over-bloated. Many of those that hang around the Federal Secretariat are not actually civil servants.

To further reduce overcrowding in passport offices, the process for collecting passports should be made easier. It is possible to allocate days for collection based on surnames. For instance, people with surnames starting A to E could be allocated Mondays and those whose surnames start F to J allocated Tuesdays and so on. Of course, there should be a system to cater for those that need their passports more urgently and those that miss their appointments days, possibly including a small premium for them to pay if they have not used the fast-track service suggested earlier. It may also be possible to work with NIPOST on passport collection, either by having people collect them at post offices with proof of identification or having them delivered by post and signed for where there is a verifiable address.

Signage in most passport offices is poor. Many people arrive passport offices not knowing how much the official cost of the passport is. When a man in a government uniform tells you that the cost of a passport is a certain amount, you are entitled to believe them whether or not that is the official price. The official cost of obtaining a passport should be clearly displayed in all passport offices. There should also be a queuing system and clear signs about where to go next when you have finished one aspect of the process. These are changes that are not difficult to do. When I brought a similar issue to the attention of the Corps Marshall of the Federal Road Safety Commission, he implemented them over the course of one weekend. He had complained that they had signs showing the cost and process of obtaining a drivers’ license but that people, probably his officers, tear them off the very next day. We decided to have them printed as standing banners and it became a disciplinary offence for any head of a licensing office not to have the banners in place at all times. They are still there today.

Another pinch point for Nigerians is having to travel to Abuja to change names following marriage or to change any other details. While there are probably good security reasons for this, the Service should consider decentralising this, perhaps initially on a regional basis before it covers all states. Of course, the necessary precautions should be put in place to avoid abuse by unscrupulous officers. I am aware that there are good security and operational reasons for a lot of these kinds of constraints that people complain about, like change of name and changing dates of birth. However, the convenience of the citizen should not be compromised because we are not able to put in place adequate security and operational procedures to guard against abuse by officers. In this era of technology, it is easy to tell which officer has done what and hold them to account.

Incidentally, many Nigerians complain about the practice of the Immigration Service stamping all entries and exits in the passport. They wonder why the passport cannot simply be scanned, as the stamps use up valuable space in the passport booklets. While there are likely to be security reasons for this, even the DSS uses scans, rather than stamps.

I know how difficult it can be to change institutions and the way things are done. As the saying goes, everybody likes change but nobody likes to change. Managing change is difficult and takes time. There will always be a small minority will do everything they can to frustrate change. The Immigration Service is a paramilitary organisation, with its own ways of ensuring that orders are obeyed. However, if force and a command-and-control structure is all it takes, our Police Force would not be corrupt and there would be no illegal checkpoints on the roads. There is a need to win the hearts and minds of officers and to ensure that sufficient incentives are put in place to make bad behaviour unattractive. The question for every senior public servant must be “What will you be remembered for when you leave service?” CGI Mohammed Babandede has the opportunity to solve the perennial problem of passports before he retires. If he is able to do so, his name will be written in gold in the minds of most Nigerians. He has successfully tackled unprofessional behaviour at the airports, visa on arrival and many other difficult issues. I have no doubt whatsoever that he can also successfully make the issue of passport application, issuance and collection as painless as possible for Nigerians.

God bless the Nigeria Immigration Service. God bless Nigeria.

Faced with the rising cost of governance, President Jonathan set up the Oronsaye Committee to look at ways to “rationalise” the number of agencies, parastatals and commissions that the Federal Government has. The Committee had four main objectives in its Terms of Reference: provide a comprehensive listing of all agencies, parastatals and commissions; recommend which agencies should be scrapped; recommend the merger of agencies with duplicate functions, advice government on the agencies that should be commercially viable and which government should no longer make budgetary appropriations for; and make any other recommendations that will help to reduce the cost of governance. Apart from publishing a White Paper which rejected most of Oronsaye’s recommendations in 2014, not much was done by the Jonathan government on this. Not even implementing those recommendations that it had accepted and gazetted in a 2014 White Paper.

Even before he took power in May 2015, President Buhari had, at various fora, highlighted the need to reduce the cost of governance by reducing the number of agencies and parastatals, in line with the recommendations of the Oronsaye Report. He signified his intent in this direction by reducing the number of Ministries from 31 to 24 in late 2015. The Oronsaye Report submitted in 2012 had catalogued 541 agencies of the Federal Government. However, the Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation announced in January 2019, that the 2019 Federal Budget had had to make provisions for more than 1,100 Federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies. So, a pertinent question to ask is: what happened to the “political will” to reduce the number of agencies, parastatals and commissions, both from the previous and current administration?

Assuming that the intentions of Presidents Jonathan and Buhari to reduce the cost of governance by reducing the number of agencies and parastatals were honest and genuine, it is clear that even ‘political will’ from the very top is only a necessary but insufficient condition for reforms. This is especially the case in a federal democracy where power is distributed to various power blocks. Most agencies and parastatals are set up by law. They cannot be scrapped or merged without the National Assembly. The National Assembly will often raise the emotive issue of potential job losses and not take forward any such proposals. Conversely, the National Assembly has a perverse incentive to create more and more agencies, with scant regard to their impact on the wage bill and the cost of governance. Every legislator wants to show that they have “attracted” development to their area. They will therefore sponsor bills that seek the creation of yet another “university of education”, even though there is already a Federal university, state university, polytechnic and college of education in their constituency. It is clear, therefore, that ‘political will’, even by the President, is not enough to get any movement on this issue. Of course, things will be very different if we were in a military dictatorship. We are not and most informed Nigerians have no appetite to return to military rule.

There is, therefore, a need to better define what we really mean by ‘political will’ when it comes to driving public service reforms in a democracy. I submit that in a democracy where power is distributed across various bastions, real political will has four main components: a capacity to understand a problem; the presence of a critical mass of people across the arms and/or tiers of government willing to do something about it; the power, commitment, resilience and insulation from the status quo to be able to do something about it; and a clear approach supported by the critical mass for tackling the problem. Where these are lacking, political will, even by the President, is insufficient.

Although ‘political will’ is often made to sound as the panacea to every reform problem, it is one of the hardest things to get in a democracy with distributed power, using our criteria above. What then do we do? Do we wait for the occasional happy accident when circumstances may favourably align to produce the political will we need, or is there something else we can do about it?

I would argue that in our current system, the ‘technical will’ of public servants presents an equally viable, if not a more viable, alternative. As I said earlier, most agencies are set up by law, with powers enshrined in statutes. A rather surprising fact that I learnt when I was a Director-General in the Federal Government is that, quite often, nobody actually stops the technocrat from delivering on their legal mandate. The limitation on actions is often placed by the technocrat him or herself, based on what the perceive that their principal may or not want. In reality, any politician will jump on the bandwagon and take the credit when the technocrat is doing well. On the other hand, the head of a government organisation is appointed but not told what to deliver. Government often expects senior government officials to be sufficiently capable to use the laws setting up their organisations to deliver their mandate. When those laws are insufficient or are outdated, it is the responsibility of the chief executive to ask for more powers, first through the Federal Executive Council and then through the legislature.

I would argue that it is technical will, perhaps even more than political will, that drove the improvements in NAFDAC under Dora Akunyili, in the EFCC under Nuhu Ribadu and in the Federal Inland Revenue Service under Ifueko Omoigui-Okauru. It is technical will, perhaps more than political will, that is currently driving the improvements in the National Bureau of Statistics, the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation, the National Centre for Disease Control and the Consumer Protection Council. It is certainly technical will, much more than political will, that drove the modest improvements that I was able to make as Director-General of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms.

In conclusion, political will is, of course, vitally important when driving reforms. It makes the life of the reformer a whole lot easier when it exists. Knowing that the reformer has support for their actions from the highest level of government insulates the reformer from distractions and unnecessary bottlenecks. However, in a federal democracy where power is distributed, true political will can be very difficult to get. Where it is lacking, as it very often is, the technical will of public sector chief executives can achieve a lot more than waiting for the happy accident of a convergence of political will, simply by making full use of their mandates and powers provided by law. They just need to conquer their own fears and choose legacy over the comfort of anonymity.

Government communication is often reactive, rather than proactive, and government often only comes out to challenge wrong narrative very many days after news has developed wings and flown to all corners of the land. By the time government comes out with a response, the damage has been done. The few people that will even get to hear government’s side of the story will treat the response as an afterthought and doubt its credibility. Unfortunately, people tend not to believe the police when, after killing a citizen, they say “We came under heavy fire from some unknown hoodlums and returned fire for fire, following which one of them died.” The lack of faith in what government says is worse in pre-election periods. People tend not to believe government’s claimed achievements, particularly when they are hearing about them for the first time in the run up to elections. The damage is worse when government spokespersons use fake images of projects in other countries, culled from the internet, and claim they are projects executed by government in Nigeria. When the people feel that they cannot trust their government, there is a serious problem. It makes it much more difficult to demand patriotism and personal sacrifice of the citizen.

The communication architecture of the Federal Government is fragmented and lacking in cohesion. The current President does not engage enough with citizens. For some reason, he seems to be more at home talking to the international press while he is out of the country than engaging with the local press or directly with citizens. Interactions with citizens are carefully scripted and it appears that every effort is made to avoid live interactions. Therefore, any human, humorous and compassionate side that the President may have is invisible to the public.

We have a Ministry of Information whose job appears to be to dish out unidirectional government propaganda, with little or no effort to listen to citizens or actively engage them. The name of the Ministry itself is indicative of its approach. The agencies and parastatals under the Ministry, such as the Nigeria Television Authority and the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, adopt the same approach of simply eulogising government. Quite often, what they announce as their news headlines are completely at odds with the hot topics being discussed by citizens, nationally and internationally, particularly when the news does not favour government. Again, this has meant that many people, particularly the youth, do not believe anything coming out of government news channels.

Next, we have Special Advisers and Special Assistants to the President on Media and Publicity. These are the people that speak on behalf of the President specifically, and whose sole job appears to be to attack perceived enemies of the President and to defend the President from attack. Occupants of these posts are usually journalists, for reasons that are really not clear to me. Bizarrely, although they tend to appear on television very often, they hardly ever write articles in newspapers. In recent times, government has also engaged some Special Assistants on New Media to manage its social media platforms. Apart from those that make efforts to inform the public, one or more of these Special Assistants on New Media tend to settle into the role of an “attack dog.” Their unassigned role appears to be to pour invectives and insults, some of them potentially libellous, on members of the opposition and, sometimes also, members of the public.

Given the nature of social media, communication by those government officials in charge of new media are more immediate, responsive and interactive than those of traditional media. The immediacy of interaction required to engage on social media is something that is unusual in traditional government communications. Many governments around the world struggle with this.

Finally, government has a National Orientation Agency that has been so ineffective over the years that citizens argue among themselves whether or not it is still in existence. Even lawmakers have questioned the usefulness of having the agency and appropriating billions of Naira to it every year. Not many people know that the National Orientation Agency even has offices in all 774 Local Government Areas of Nigeria. Apart from this, Ministries, Departments and Agencies each have their own information or communication functions, with widely variable quality.

The Directors of Information in the Ministries are staff of the Federal Ministry of Information posted to the various ministries as the Ministry of Information deems fit. They are often too far removed from the action to know what is really happening in the Ministries, especially as Ministers will often arrive with their own media advisers. The Directors of Information also tend to be more comfortable with traditional media and distrustful of new media. Apart from their instinctive cautiousness as civil servants, it is also very difficult for the Director to make any money from new media. With traditional media, they can get commissions, through proxies, for any advert they place in the newspapers or on radio and television. With traditional media also, they need not make themselves available for the immediate attacks and challenges that come through social media.

The websites of many government Ministries, Departments and Agencies are out-of-date and non-interactive. In many cases, the email address and the phone numbers on the websites are non-functional. I have been contacted on Twitter at least twice by foreign investors that were looking to invest in Nigeria but could not find a way to reach the relevant Ministry. I have had to personally call the concerned Ministers to put them in touch with the potential investors. Surely, this does not connote seriousness on the part of government.

Between the Ministry of Information, the Special Advisers and Special Assistants on Media at the Villa, the National Orientation Agency and the communication functions of the Ministries, Departments and Agencies, there is no apparent coordinating mechanism. There was some talk of a comprehensive communication strategy some time ago but some of the relevant stakeholders were not even invited to, or were not available to attend, some of the discussions. I do not believe that the initiative ever really took off. I also understand that there was a Presidential Communications Retreat following the 2019 elections. However, it is difficult to see what positive impact the retreat may have had, given the recent handling of the “RUGA Settlements” debacle between the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, the National Economic Council and the Special Assistants to the President on Media at the Villa.

When government communication is effective, the President is able to look citizens in the eyes and tell them the state of things and they would believe him. Government communication would be proactive, rather than reactive. It will advance government’s own agenda, rather than defensively reacting to the agenda of others. Facts will be presented in a credible, transparent and coordinated, way by people who know what they are talking about. When government says it will do something, it will actually do it. When it is not able to do it or gets it wrong, it will quickly admit its mistakes, apologise and set out the steps to ensure that any lapses do not recur. Communication will be done in an atmosphere of openness, transparency, honesty and responsibility.

The merits of continuing to have a Ministry of Information at all is questionable. This military-era approach has been abandoned by many countries. The age-old practice of appointing journalists as Presidential spokespersons is also questionable. While I have nothing against journalists, I believe that the President will be better served if he were to get rounded technocrats who can explain government policies, actions and results to citizens in a relatable and easy-to-understand way. To be able to do so, the government spokesperson needs to have the mental capacity and breadth of knowledge to be able to understand, at least superficially, a wide range of disciplines ranging from public finance management, including budgeting, monetary policy, health, education, security, agriculture, petroleum and electricity. They will form a close relationship with the subject matter experts in the Ministries, Departments and Agencies, such that government speaks with a credible and unified voice on issues of importance. That way, a journalist will not be arguing with the nation’s Chief Statistician on the methodology for calculating the number of jobs created.

Engaging with citizens and communicating government activities is of vital importance. Many people erroneously think that you only need to do job and that the results will speak for you. It does not work that way in government. The image is as important as the substance. Even when you are delivering results, there is often a time lag between when people start to see changes and when they start to believe them, or even realise that things have changed around them. Nigerians are inherently incredulous people. Every news of progress is first dismissed as a lie. Nigerians demand pictures. Then when pictures are presented, they claim it has been photoshopped and demand videos. When videos are presented, they are said to have been doctored. When they are invited to see things for themselves, they cannot be bothered and people that go to see with their own eyes and touch with their own hands are dismissed as paid agents of government. Aspects of this has to do with politics and the lack of a distinction between national interest and vibrant political opposition. Most of it though has to do with a longstanding history of government not talking enough to citizens and not always telling them the truth. In an environment where politicians dig shallow cavities in the ground, fill them with water from a water tanker and commission them as “solar-powered boreholes”, you cannot really blame the citizen for his suspicion of politicians and government.

All these is why government needs to do more on communications. It needs a clear, comprehensive communication strategy. It needs to reconsider the roles of the Federal Ministry of Information and its agencies and parastatals, as well as how government communications are handled in Ministries, Departments and Agencies. By the way, I do not understand the rationale behind including NTA and FRCN in the Federal Government’s annual budget when their competitors like AIT and Channels are profitable businesses. We also need to decide whether or not we still need the National Orientation Agency in its current form. I suspect that if it is abolished, not many Nigerians will miss it. Finally, we would like Mr President to please talk to us more.

*Dr Joe Abah is a development practitioner and the immediate past Director-General of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms.

However, in 2015, Nigeria had its first transition from one ruling party to an opposition party at the national level. This threw up a lot of issues. The incoming party accused the government of the day of refusing to give it handing over notes. What was not apparent to many was that the preparation of the sort of detailed handing over notes that the incoming government was asking for was not what the civil service was used to producing, and that there was limited internal capacity to produce them. Some of us were eventually drafted in at the last minute to help in its compilation and editing, but there were still major concerns by the incoming government when we eventually delivered the handing over notes.

As Director-General of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms at the time, we organised a series of trainings for civil servants on how to cope with this unusual change in government and produced a number of manuals on how the bureaucracy should prepare itself to assist the new government. Take up was low and many senior people, such as Permanent Secretaries, that would have benefited from it sent very junior staff instead. Early in 2015, I attended a seminar organised by the US-based National Democratic Institute, focused on the need to legislate the political transition process. The House of Representatives eventually brought forward a Presidential (Transition) Bill, 2015: “A Bill for an Act to provide for the smooth and orderly transfer of power from one government to another and other related matters”, to try and address the matter.

Among other things, the Presidential (Transition) Bill requires the sitting President to, within two weeks of the results of the election being declared, provide working space for up to 10 people nominated by the President-Elect to “begin a review and analysis of budgeted expenditures during the tenure of the incumbent President. It also provides that he should pay the allowances of members of the President-Elect’s Transition Team and constitute his own Transition Team, with the freedom to draw members from any area of the public service.

Interestingly, the Bill makes provision for the appointment of an Administrator-General after every general election, to take an inventory of all Federal Government assets, ensure that all assets are maintained, ensure the provision of documents to the Transition Team of the incoming government and prosecute any person that breaches the Act. The penalties in the Bill are N10 million, or 6 months imprisonment, or both. The sitting President was also required to make budgetary provision for this activities of not more than N100 million and ensure that it is appropriated for in the budget of the election year. I believe that the Bill was passed by the House of Representatives but has not yet become law.

There were some issues with the Bill. Firstly, it is tantamount, in a way, to preparing a will, something that most Nigerians are not enthusiastic about. Secondly, the appointment of the Administrator-General is only expected to happen after general elections and it is not clear whether or not it is a permanent or tenured position that will see to the maintenance and public publication of an inventory of all government assets, and liabilities on an ongoing basis once they are acquired. It is whatever the Administrator-General is given by the incumbent government that he or she has to work with. This would still leave a gap between what the outgoing government says it is leaving behind and what the incoming government says it inherited. Lastly, it gave no deadlines for when a handing over note must be prepared.

Many other countries have Presidential Transition Acts. The closest to home is Ghana that enacted a Presidential Transitions Act in 2012 and used it, for the first time, in its 2012 elections. The Ghana Act is more robust, in my view. It provides for a Joint Transition Committee made up in equal numbers by nominees of both the President and the President-Elect. Its roles include ensuring the smooth handover of power, providing daily national security briefings to the President-Elect and ensuring that government continues to meet its obligations. It also provides for an Advisory Council headed by the Speaker and made up of one nominee by the sitting President and another nominee by the President-Elect. Additionally, it provides for an Administrator-General in a seemingly-permanent capacity and a Presidential Estates Unit under the Administrator-General to keep an inventory of all government assets and ensure their maintenance.

Significantly, the Ghana Presidential Transition Act stipulates that handing over Notes must be presented to the Administrator-General no later than 30 days before the date of the presidential elections and that he shall make them available to the Parliament, Chief Justice, Council of State and Public Records and Archives Department. If this sort of law had been present for the 2015 elections, it would have greatly avoided the issues that arose during that transition and reduced, to some extent, the level of distrust between the outgoing and incoming governments.

I believe that the issues are in even sharper focus at state level. Every four years, claims and counter-claims are made by outgoing and new governments about how much was left in the treasury of the state. Following the 2019 elections, we saw something similar to the situation at national level in 2015, in that there was a change of power from a ruling party to an opposition party in a number of states. In Imo State, for instance, the new governor alleged that no handing over notes whatsoever was provided to him, never mind one of inadequate quality. He also conducted the press round the governor’s office which appears to have been vandalised, with papers strewn everywhere. Interestingly, he asked the Head of the Civil Service who was present during the inspection of the governor’s office whether she thought it was a fit environment for the new governor to work out of and she said: “Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.” I digress.

In my view, there is an urgent need to legislate Transition Bills at both national and state levels. This will ensure that the circumstances of 2015 and 2019 do not recur. The Ghana example of ensuring that handing over notes, with specific guidelines on what it should contain, are delivered 30 days before the date of the elections, is worthy of emulation. It also makes sense to have a Presidential Estates Unit under an Administrator-General who has a fixed tenure that transverses the transition period. This will ensure that there is an inventory of all government assets as they are acquired and that those assets are constantly maintained. It will make it difficult for public servants to disappear with vehicles, computers and other assets when one government ends and before another one commences. It will also make it possible to provide the information, on request, to civil society organisations, the media and the courts, in case of a corruption trial.

I would similarly argue that such a Transition Act should make it illegal to employ any new personnel during the transition period. This will stop the current practice of governors flooding the public service with thousands of new employees a few weeks before handing over, putting them on the payroll and landing the incoming governor with the problem of either paying them and risking not having enough money to spend on capital projects, on the one hand, or sacking them and risking emotive accusations of having deepened the unemployment of people who didn’t employ themselves, on the other.

A lot of the challenges we contend with year after year can be addressed relatively quickly if we want to. That we do not address them is not because we do not know what to do, but because we do not want to.

*Dr Joe Abah is a development practitioner and the immediate past Director-General of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms.

Are civil servants incompetent? Before you answer this question, consider another question: why do the same civil servants serve with merit on building committees in their private lives and build churches, mosques and community centres, to time, cost and quality? There is often never any budget variations or overruns and nobody embezzles money. Why do they distinguish themselves on Parent/ Teacher Associations? Why are they pillars of their communities? Why do they serve with great credit on ad-hoc committees? What happens to those same civil servants when they walk into the Ministry on Monday morning? Why do they suddenly become incompetent, useless and in need of constant ‘capacity building’? Ever thought about that? Why is it that most voluntary self-help community projects are completed but a World Bank review of 2009 shows that only 29% of government projects are ever completed and 26% usually get cancelled. Why is this the case?

Professor Peter Ekeh wrote a brilliant article in 1974 titled “Colonialism and the Two Publics”. If you haven’t read it, you should, as it provides helpful insights. He explained that in the mind of most post-colonials, there are two ‘publics’: the primordial public at the village level for which you should sacrifice and give your all and not embezzle from, and the civic public (essentially the Western system of government created by the colonialists) that you have a “duty” to steal from to feed the primordial public at your village and clan level. This goes some way to explain why people in public office are expected to steal to come and build a mansion in the village and for many to ask: “Na your papa money?” I am not condoning incompetence in public service. I just want you to understand how it happens.

You go to the Federal Secretariat every day and see various people hanging around doing nothing. Are these people all civil servants? Well that is another matter entirely! When KI was in government, there was a group a 6 or 7 young men that greeted me excessively every morning and consistently offer to carry my bag upstairs, even though I refused every single day. They sat behind the reception counter downstairs had laptops in front of them most times. They once came to see me as a group to see if I could help with an Immigration recruitment vacancy because they were all unemployed and had applied for the vacancies. Apparently, they were originally engaged as casual staff to input some data on Pensions and that work had come to an end. Since then, they had been coming to ‘work’ every morning, with absolutely nothing to do. They depend on handouts from their effusive greetings and one of them confided in my staff that before I gave them a small amount of money collectively for Easter, they only had N70 between the 7 of them that day. There are many people like these that hang around the Secretariat and various office complexes. There are also some retired servicemen in brown uniform, men of the Nigeria Legion, who provide some security, help to switch off the lights in the offices, manage access for the cleaning companies, switch on generators and so on. They tend to sit around for most of the day as their main duties are after the close of work. Most offices engage them and give them a stipend as a way of keeping them active and engaged. They are not civil servants.

That is not to say that there aren’t civil servants that are underutilised. However, in some countries, it is seen as mental torture to be employed and not be given work. The law may even see it as ‘constructive dismissal’ for which you can claim compensation from your employer at an industrial tribunal. There are myriad reasons why many people are underutilised. One is corruption. Many chief executives simply select a small group of people with whom they ‘do business.’ Everybody else outside this small group does no work, sees no ‘benefits of office’ and doesn’t even know what their own organisation is doing. Nobody cares or even notices whether or not anybody outside the select group comes to work, never mind loitering around with nothing to do. Those that come to work do so in the hope that some crumbs may fall off the table of the inner circle. After a fruitless wait, they will start to devise new ways to obstruct the business of the public so that they can extract tolls to get their own ‘share.’ I have seen instances where this included writing letters to people falsely claiming that they have been “directed” to ask them to do things that will require their parting with money before they can get services that they are otherwise entitled to. Of course, this behaviour is inexcusable and condemnable. I am not condoning or excusing it. I just want you to understand how it happens.

Another reason, of course, is a lack of leadership that is committed to the cause of the Nigerian people. Coming into government, I was struck by how insular the public service is. The last person anybody thinks about is the man, woman or child on the street. The focus is always of the public servant is often on “our pay”, “our welfare”, “our training”… seldom on the welfare of the public. Therefore, there is often no attempt to utilize people to deliver better services, reduce waiting times, respond more quickly to letters and complaints or go out of our way to assist the elderly and vulnerable. In a culture of “I am directed”, nothing happens unless the leader “directs.” The leader often doesn’t direct in the interest of the public. In some cases, some leaders do not direct at all and for months or even years, people come to work with nothing to do. After a while, they stop coming at all. I am not excusing or condoning it. I just want you to understand how it happens.

There are, of course, civil servants who do not want to do any work. The proper thing to do should be to apply existing sanctions as spelt out in the Public Service Rules. But then you have to think about the tortuous process of imposing discipline on a civil servant through the Federal Civil Service Commission. A leader without the strength of character to do the right thing will succumb to threats of spurious petitions alleging ethnic or religious bias (which some civil servants are experts at writing), pleadings by pastors and imams on behalf of the civil servant, a reminder that Nigeria does not run a welfare system and has no social safety nets, which means that every civil servant has at least 30 dependents, and requests for “soft landing.” The same people who had been clamouring for the imposition of discipline will ask you whether you want to contribute to rising unemployment in the country! Many chief executives therefore take the easy option of either ignoring non-performing staff, pretending that they do not exist, or simply sending them back to the Head of Service to have them posted to another unfortunate Ministry. I am not condoning or excusing it. I just want you to understand how it happens.

Are civil servants corrupt? Yes, there is corruption in our civil service. There is also corruption in our Police, Immigration and Customs services and some bad eggs are giving the public service a bad name. My experience has been though that it is not worse than the corruption in the private sector, some religious organisations or even in the lives of many individual Nigerians that I know. Save for very few exceptions though, most civil servants do not get the opportunity to engage in grand corruption. Civil service corruption is like termites eating the root of a tree. They only eat a little at a time, but where it is left unchecked, they are the ones that will eventually bring down the tree, not the monkey that plucks the juicy fruit on top of the tree! We must tackle and sanction bureaucratic corruption, otherwise we will not develop. But before we cast all the blame on civil servants, please note that a full director in the civil service who may have put in 25 years of honest and meritorious service cannot afford to live in Abuja city on his salary. He cannot afford to own a house anywhere. He cannot afford a good “Tokunbo” car and cannot survive any unexpected economic shocks. I am not condoning or excusing petty thieving. I just want you to understand how it happens.

For the avoidance of doubt, there are very many public servants (including civil servants) who are dedicated to the good of our country and who work exceedingly hard every day to keep us moving forward. You will perhaps only notice their work if they were to stop doing it.  Incidentally, apart from the Nigeria Labour Congress national strikes on things like removal of fuel subsidy and the National Minimum Wage, the civil service has not been on strike for more than 10 years now. Am I therefore saying that everything about the civil service is perfect and that it is all someone else’s fault? No. Not at all! I just want you to understand how things really happen, so that you can separate myth from reality.

**Dr Joe Abah is a development practitioner and the immediate past Director-General of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms.