Nigeria’s civil service commissions, the “Katsina Declaration” and its reform implications, By Tunji Olaopa

From 25 to twenty-eight November, the Katsina State authorities hosted the annual convention of the Nationwide Council for Civil Service Commissions (NCCSC). That is approaching the heel of a hiatus of over ten years. This truth in itself instantly speaks to a big subject within the ineffectiveness of the gatekeeping perform of the civil service commissions in Nigeria. If the physique answerable for the gatekeepers has failed for over ten years to adjudicate on their effectiveness or in any other case, it raises a trigger for concern. Nevertheless, the convention theme — “The Position of the Civil Service Commissions in Driving the Renewed Hope Agenda” — alerts a readiness of the NCCSC to regain its constitutional perform in regulating the affairs of the civil service commissions in Nigeria as a way of getting the general public service to perform successfully as a mechanism for democratic governance and growth effectiveness.

Other than my keynote because the chairman of the federal civil service fee (FCSC), three important technical classes had been additionally facilitated by distinguished useful resource individuals who’re well-versed within the signifiers of the defining challenges that the general public service faces from their completely different vantage factors of experience. Professor Adeola Adenikinju is the president of the Nigerian Financial Society and had been concerned in nationwide planning designs, macro-economic coverage change administration and advisories for many years; Mr Soji Apampa, the founding father of the Conference on Enterprise Integrity, had contributed to conversations and praxis within the constructing of nationwide integrity programs as systemic bulwark within the anti-corruption marketing campaign, and as important pillar within the values reorientation dimension to nationwide cultural adjustment dynamic; and Prof. Abdullahi Shehu, a professor of criminology, is the previous Nigerian ambassador to the Russian Federation, has core experience in capability constructing on anti-corruption insurance policies and mechanisms; selling integrity as very important element of governance and institutional reforms, and anti-money laundering and terrorism financing. Between the three of them, they highlighted a number of elementary points. First, there may be the important position that the civil servants should play in deploying transparency, accountability, professionalism and innovation in facilitating the environment friendly and efficient implementation of the important thing precedence areas of the Renewed Hope Agenda of the Tinubu administration.   

In my keynote, I laid a elementary emphasis on the transformation of the CSCs as the final word sport altering agent that’s dedicated to a renewed governance partnership with the federal government by way of the institutional reform of the general public service. And the target of this reform is to realize the re-institution of a professionalized, competency-based, meritocratic, and environment friendly worth establishment in Nigeria by way of the efficient monitoring of the constitutional gatekeeping mandate. This demand that the CSCs be capacitated sufficiently to facilitate, within the shortest attainable time, the emergence of a brand new era of public managers who’re patriotically dedicated to the reconstitution of the general public service for efficient and environment friendly service supply in Nigeria. This can demand, throughout the framework of the renewed governance partnership, the institution of efficiency contract with the staff of the MDAs, and a service compact with the communities of service and observe of public administration in Nigeria, in addition to with the Nigerian citizenry. This compact will instigate the era of flagship reform and repair initiatives, change programmes, peer overview platforms and studying occasions that may doubtless preserve the varied CSCs of the federation engaged all yr spherical.

A short historic tour will throw into broad reduction the emergence of the civil service fee because the handmaiden of the British authorities in making certain the institutional sanitation of the British civil service because the fulcrum of meritocratic effectivity. It’ll additionally firmly floor the numerous relevance of the Katsina Declaration as a important watershed in getting the CSCs to gatekeep the vocational significance of the civil service in making the Renewed Hope Agenda essential for the betterment of Nigerians. Via its evolution from the traditional pharaonic Egyptian society to the monarchy in Britain, it had been tough for public administration, or the appointment of public servants, to be divorced from the whims of the king or the emperor. Certainly, the Crown deployed the civil service as a system of patronage that’s, after all, decided by political consideration and ridden by corruption. It’s a system that flouts the politics-administration distinction which is supposed to separate between politics and administrative matter for a meritocratic administrative effectivity. Nevertheless, by the point the Magna Carta had been crafted within the thirteenth century, there was already a rising must separate politics and administration, and orient the standing of the civil servants on the state and never the Crown.

A lot later, and particularly in 1782, some collection of financial reform programmes had been initiated to successfully take care of the system of royal patronage and reduce the affect of the King on the legislature. Despite the fact that this reform had a political motive, its unintended consequence on administration was the emergence of an environment friendly and non-political civil service. In different phrases, because the officers who had been progressively faraway from political actions grew to become extra non-political, in addition they more and more grew to become extra everlasting. It then grew to become more and more not possible for any of those directors to lose their positions on political grounds. The early eighteenth-century Britain subsequently started to see the gradual rise of non-party officers who stay in place when authorities modifications. This led to the second purpose that facilitated the separation between politics and administration. As administration was consolidating its autonomy, politics was equally changing into extra complicated for a minister to ever consider combining it with administrative actions.

It was at this era that the time period “civil servants”, versus the navy servants deployed by the East India Firm, was first utilized in India. By this time, it was already settled {that a} everlasting civil service may solely be secured by the institution of a safety of tenure for public servants. On the opposite aspect of the Atlantic in the US, the Pendelton Act of 1883 was promulgated to undermine the spoil system which made political patronage the premise of recruitment into the service. The Act acknowledged the importance of aggressive examinations as the premise for making certain advantage within the recruitment of civil servants. It was based on three particular aims: (a) using aggressive examinations for admission into public service; (b) supplied job safety for public staff; (c) prohibited political exercise by the civil service; and (d) inspired a non-partisan strategy to an worker choice

Nevertheless, by 1854 two very important reform reviews had been submitted that will rework the executive effectivity of the British civil service and redeem its standing as a noble vocation. The Report on the Indian Civil Service and the Northcote-Trevelyan Report had been each meant to safeguard the system in opposition to recruitment practices that may undermine the relevance and utility of the civil service for the British authorities. The Report on the Indian Civil Service was meant to institute particular mental exams which can represent the ethical commonplace for cultivating distinctive qualities—“trade, self-denial, a style for pleasure, not sensual, a laudable want for honorable distinction, a nonetheless extra laudable want to acquire the approbation of buddies and relations”—that may stand the civil servants out as public spirited {and professional}. 

Then again, the Northcote-Trevelyan Report is much more revealing. In particular phrases, the Report was primarily based on 4 primary premises:

Recruitment into the Civil Service must be by open aggressive examination, the examinations could be carried out by an impartial Civil Service Board who would make sure that entry into the service could be completely on the premise of advantage.
Entrants shouldn’t be recruited for all times into a selected division however would enter a Dwelling Civil Service that will facilitate inter-departmental employees transfers. Civil servants, subsequently, would wish to have had a basic training and to be generalist reasonably than specialist of their data and expertise.
Recruits could be segregated at entry right into a hierarchical construction of grades, starting from the bottom (mechanical) degree of clerical officers, solely able to easy routine activity, as much as probably the most elevated (mental) administrative degree which would supply the ranks of senior civil servants who exist to help and information ministers within the formulation and administration of coverage.
Promotion ought solely to be on the premise of advantage and shouldn’t be on the bottom of preferment, patronage, buy or easy size of service (Pilkington, 1999: 19).

These two reviews inaugurated the emergence of the civil service fee in Britain. There are two implications for the civil service system within the Commonwealth that inherited the British administrative system. The primary is the understanding of the politics-administration dynamics that specifies the connection between the minister and the civil servants. In different phrases, the CSC turns into the institutional mechanism that will make sure that the civil service system retain its goal of manufacturing clever, environment friendly and efficient public servants that will have the ability to assist implement authorities insurance policies. The second implication is the emergence of the cadre system which ensures that entry into the civil service is gained by way of aggressive examinations. This served as the premise for the institution of a generalist class—administrative, govt and clerical—as the executive echelon of the civil service system in a descending hierarchical order of duties and {qualifications}.

If, because it has develop into clear from the bureau-pathology of the civil service in Nigeria (and the varied technical classes on the Convention), that we’ve not saved religion with the founding mandate that inaugurated the CSC because the gatekeeping mechanism for consistently reinventing the civil service as a noble calling, how can we then start that reform? What are the elemental subsequent steps to be taken in pushing the CSCs in the suitable reform instructions? The last word goal is the restoration of the CSC because the environment friendly gatekeeper for professionalism and repair integrity enabled by a constitutional mandate to function the defender and protector of a advantage system grounded on a competency-based human useful resource administration practices within the civil service.

Six elementary steps are attainable to get the CSCs in Nigeria to this final goal. One: there may be the necessity to professionalize the CSC secretariat in order to capacitate it because the core change area for resolving all human useful resource and different associated points in regards to the public administration career in Nigeria. Two: there may be the correlated urgency to modernize the processes and companies of the secretariat by way of persevering with digitization that may allow it to eradicate obstacles to creativity and innovation within the service supply mandate of the general public service. Three: the varied CSCs must overview and improve the rules for appointment, promotion and self-discipline within the civil companies, in addition to reinforce the usual working procedures throughout the varied CSCs as a imply of guiding in opposition to the incidences of sharp practices, the politicization of employees profession administration, and the enforcement of strict compliance with the foundations of regulation and the constitutional order in all operations. With regard to promotion, there may be the necessity, as an illustration, to institute a performance-based promotion system rooted in competency and project-based assessments.

4: additionally it is crucial to undertake a complete overview of the CSC’s delegated powers to the MDAs when it comes to operational pointers with a view to strengthening oversight, compliance and enforcement. 5: it turns into crucial that each one CSCs should strategically collaborate with their respective heads of service to undertake and facilitate the worth audit of the civil service that may obtain the target of implementing self-discipline when it comes to the code of conduct and code of ethics of the civil service. This will likely be to articulate a cultural adjustment programme and worth reorientation of the civil service as a noble calling. Six: the CSCs should embark on research to profile modifications and transformations within the rising new public service, particularly when it comes to the brand new regular demanded by COVID-19 transformation of the office, the rising modifications enforced within the nature of administrative processes resulting from new digital applied sciences and synthetic intelligences, and the peculiar sociological imperatives of emergence of the Gen Z and Gen Alpha and their impression on the character of labor. This new regular articulates pressing administrative measures which can be demanded for situating the general public service throughout the urgency of relevance for the fourth and fifth industrial revolutions. Seventh and eventually: every CSC should align these new reform instructions and imperatives with their implications for industrial relations. The plan have to be to shift the main target away from the adversarial to developmental labour activism and relations that make attainable sustainable change agenda within the public sector.          

Setting out on these reform instructions requires particular reform methods and focus of implementation. It calls for, in different phrases, change administration necessities which can be particular for getting the CSCs up to the mark in its intent of attaining its constitutional position because the powerhouse for the enforcement of merit-based competency within the civil service. The NCCSC Convention threw up plenty of strategic reconsiderations that promise important reform rewards—when it comes to facilitating the “Katsina Declaration”—for advancing the effectiveness and effectivity of the civil service in Nigeria as a world class establishment for backstopping democratic governance and the Renewed Hope Agenda of the Tinubu administration.  

One elementary and urgent enterprise the Convention threw up which has an overarching impression on not solely firming the rearticulation of the general public service as a brand new institutional model—as a vocational calling—is the urgency of promulgating a Public Service Act as a authorized instrument for codifying the instrumental effectivity of civil service governance and operations. The necessity for the Act derives from the argument that the inherited administrative codes similar to public service guidelines, monetary regulation, guideline on administrative procedures, and so forth., which have their deep roots within the British unwritten structure custom, have develop into outdated, particularly within the mild of up to date postcolonial realities in Nigeria. That is additionally extra in order that the British that bequeathed this administrative custom has advanced past it to enact quite a few legislations for the governance of the general public service.

This Public Service Act additionally has deep implication for strategically revisiting the staffing necessities of the civil service, however particularly that of the CSCs. This speaks, as an illustration, first to the generalist framework that constitutes the CSC secretariats’ expertise set. This framework grossly limits the CSCs and their problem-solving capability to resolve numerous profession administration points involving employees. That is additional difficult by the excessive turnover price and different challenges related to staffing the CSC from the civil service widespread pool. The following strategic consideration derives from the urgency of digitisation and automation that have to be the premise of modernizing the CSCs’ important operations. Recruitment, for instance, requires on-line software portals which can be back-ended by efficient databases. Promotion additionally calls for on-line recalibration when it comes to accreditation and CBT assessments. Self-discipline and appeals will be quick tracked by way of the deployment of software program that tracks reviews, circumstances and processes.

Civil service commissions might want to capacitated to be way more efficient and environment friendly throughout the context of obtainable funds and resourcing frameworks. The FCSC and the state CSC will subsequently must develop into artistic in sourcing for a variety of technical helps to boost funds that may allow important research.

First, there may be the necessity to reinvent the CSC founding mandate to deepen pointers that undergird advantage in entry-level evaluation and to infuse higher contents and requirements to, as an illustration, overview high quality of the syllabi and questions within the computer-based exams at promotion exams.
Second, the CSCs must deepen the rules for grounding the appliance of the federal character coverage on advantage and meritocratic parameters within the recruitment course of.
Third, the CSCs must provoke diagnostic research to unravel the structural bottlenecks hindering profession development of officers as imply by which to reinvent manpower planning, manpower forecasting and succession planning that articulate a greater framework for monitoring the dimensions and development of service by way of inside administration controls.

Lastly, the Katsina Declaration emphasised the necessity to preserve the modernizing crucial in sight by way of the fixed group of seminar occasions, each digital and bodily, that preserve the eye of the CSCs firmly on new and rising tendencies and international practices in human useful resource practices that preserve the Commissions on their toes when it comes to their constitutional mandate within the new administrative regular.

The Katsina Declaration constitutes one other turning level, and a vital one at that, in facilitating the reawakening of the CSCs to their constitutional mandate. And that is much more elementary at this era when the Tinubu administration actually calls for that the civil service regain its effectiveness to have the ability to translate the insurance policies of presidency into dividends of democratic governance. 

Tunji Olaopa is chairman, Federal Civil Service Fee, Abuja; E-mail: tolaopa2003@gmail.com