Whenever things go wrong in the Nigerian government, the civil servant always seems to get the blame. Therefore, such terms as useless, incompetent, corrupt, indisciplined, clueless, bloated, idle and overstaffed are freely used. From the media, to academics, to politicians, it is a free-for-all and the civil service is a pliable punching bag. Even the most corrupt and incompetent legislator, hungry civil society journeyman or dodgy private sector crook will take delight in pouring scorn on the civil servant. “Sack them all”, they’ll scream sanctimoniously… once they are sure that they don’t have a pending file before the civil servant. Some civil servants too will often join others in running down their colleagues, in the hope that they can somehow appear to be better than their peers. Ironically though, I find that it is often the most corrupt and incompetent civil servants that will tell everyone who cares to listen how corrupt and incompetent civil servants are! Of course, many honest and competent civil servants sometimes denigrate their colleagues in the service, often out of frustration with “the system.” But Stockholm Syndrome is real.
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.