Date: 2016-08-29

A Constitutional Lawyer, Yusuf Ola-Olu Ali, in Ilorin on Friday traced the harbinger of the rot in the civil service and blamed former military president, Ibrahim Babadamosi Babangida's regime for inducing politicisation in the service.

By allowing politics to sneak into the system, Ali, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, said the regime sacrificed merit and seniority in the service. In a paper tagged "Public Service Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow", which he delivered at the launch of an autobiography of a former Secretary to the Kwara State Government, Alhaji Shehu AbdulGafar in Ilorin, the legal luminary alleged that the regime encouraged sharp practices by appointing Director Generals to replace Permanent Secretaries.

The autobiography was titled "My Public Service at the Heart Of National Development". Ola-Olu Ali said the appointment of DGs, which he believed, contradicted civil service procedure turned the appointees to men of political power and influence by wielding substantial economic means and financial muscles.

He said the military administration undermined the basis of political neutrality in the public service and destroyed completely the socio-economic innocence of the public servant. The senior lawyer noted that the policy transformed the hitherto public servant into an interested competitor, adding that the enormity of the power he wielded was not just for political office but also for economic power.

"The military started the politicisation of (civil) the service under Babangida regime. They appointed Director-Generals to replace Permanent Secretaries. The Director-Generals who became accounting officers were political appointees. The appointments were not based on merit and seniority.

"Consequently, and unlike during the civilian regime, and owing substantially to the complete absence of public accountability, bureaucratic sole administrators, and senior officials in different capacities and quasi-political roles, became, not only men of political power and influence, but also men of substantial economic means and financial muscle.

"Military rule, thus, not only undermined the basis of political neutrality in the Nigerian public service, it destroyed completely the socio-economic innocence of the public servant and transformed him into an interested competitor, not only for political office but also for economic power with the people he was employed to serve", Ali said.

He regretted that the rot in the service had paved the way for civil servants to aid and abet corruption across the ties. "In recent times, top public officers have been accused of embezzling gratuities and pensions of senior colleagues who had retired from service. "Poor remuneration has exposed civil servants to sharp practices, most of them demand for money before rendering their service to the public.

"Most of them keep business letter-headed papers, invoices receipts of various companies owned by them and become suppliers and contractors, even in their own offices", he said Submitting that no nation could develop beyond the capacity of its public service, the legal icon said "unfortunately, there is a broad consensus amongst Nigerians that our public service is both broken and dysfunctional.

"The quality of our public servants and the service they provide to the nation are below expectation. Unlike the days of yore, when only the best and brightest competed to join the administrative service, our public service is now seen as the employer of the dull, the lazy and the corrupt."

Proffering solution to the menacing situation in the service, Ali called for training and retraining of civil servants to enable them adapt to modern trends. He said the civil service should be repositioned to be the information pool for government, which commissioners and ministers should rely on for effective administration.

"With the current rate at which technology impacts on every aspect of the human life, I look forward to a public service aided by technology for a better service delivery to the populace", he said.

In his remark, the author of the book, Alhaji Shehu AbdulGaraf, said the autobiography was a narrative exploration into different periods of public services in Northern Nigeria and Kwara state in particular from old time to the contemporary.

"I started my career from the lowly status of a clerk but I rose, by the special grace of Allah, to the peak of the career as the Secretary to the State Government and Head of Service. This book, thus chronicles my journey in the service to its terminal point", the author said.

Source: HeraldNews