Date: 2021-09-06

Former National President, Committee for Development of Human Right (CDHR), Malachy Ugwummadu Esq, has urged public institutions to institutionalise the core values of transparency, equity, impartiality and legality to strengthen service delivery in the public service.

Ugwummadu, who disclosed this recently in Kwara State at the Strategic Planning for High and Sustainable Performance at a two-day strategic planning and management retreat entitled, 'Workplace Ethics And The Law In The Context Of The Public Service Space' said the public service values were largely informed by the democratic principles, social norms-political objectives and professional standards and expectations.

He further explained that the political class has a responsibility to ensure adequate welfare and comprehensive protection of the citizens, adding that they can only do that through strengthening properly constituted institutions and bureaucracies like the public service for effective service delivery.

"The public service institutions are encouraged to institutionalize these values and hold public servants responsible for behaving in accordance with those standards. In effect, we are back to the preliminary point that the presupposition and intendment for public sector service flow from a bigger responsibility that lies within the purview of politics and politicians," he noted.

Ugwummadu hinted that the rapidly changing work environment requires regular and constant reviews of polices, practices and procedures affecting public service.

He remarked that the height to which a nation aspires to attain can easily be measured by the attention it pays to its public service and the efforts it puts to develop same.

According to him, "If it is given that in contemporary public management, a country's growth and development is proportional to and ineluctably linked to the efficiency of its public delivery hub otherwise known as the public service then, of immense importance is the need to prioritize its optimal functionality and capacity.

"A nation set on a clear and exponential public growth agenda cannot ignore its public management structure. It is precisely for this reason that underdeveloped, developing economies within fledgling democracies across the globe, particularly in Africa, are constantly advised, admonished and often warned to pay greater attention to building structural institutions as conscious responses to the increasing decline of political capital and gains against the backdrop of established reckless behaviour of the political elites in identified countries."