Nasir El-Rufai
[elombah.com] Public Service in Context - It
is both a truism that no nation develops beyond the capacity of its
public service, and there is broad consensus amongst Nigerians that our
public service is broken and dysfunctional. The quality of public
servants and the services they provide to our nation are both below
expectations. From the glorious days at independence when the best and
brightest graduates competed to join the
administrative
service up until 1970s, our public service is now seen as employer of
the dull, the lazy and the venal. We need to retrieve our old public
service - effective, well paid and largely meritocratic, attracting
bright people imbibed with a spirit of promoting public good.
The
Nigerian civil service evolved from the colonial service with its
historical British roots of an independent, non-political and
meritocratic administrative machinery for governing the country. Each
region then had its civil service in addition to the federal service.
What
is the public service? How did our public evolve from inception to
excellence and now its current abysmal state of ineffectiveness? How can
the public service be reformed, re-skilled and right-sized to provide
the basic social services that will earn the trust of Nigerians and
foreigners alike?
The Public Service - An Overview
The
public service consists of the civil service - career staff whose
appointment, promotion and discipline are under the exclusive control of
the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC), national assembly service,
the Judiciary, public officers in the military, police and paramilitary
services, employees of parastatals, educational and health
institutions. By September 2005, when the Public Service Reform Team
(PSRT) was constituted, the number of federal public servants was
slightly above one million. The estimated number working for the 36
states and the FCT was another 2 million, broken down as follows:
· Federal Core Civil Servants, including some 2,000 directors 180,000
· Uniformed Services - Military, Police and Paramilitary Services 457,000
· Parastatals, Agencies, Educational and Health Institutions 470,000
· Total Federal Public Service 1,107,000
· Public Officers at the State Level - 36 States (Estimate) 856,000
· Public Officers in the Federal Capital Territory Administration 19,000
· Public Officers at the 774 Local Governments and 6 FCT Area Councils 620,000
· Total Sub-National Public Service 1,495,000
· TOTAL: Public Sector Employees in Nigeria 2,602,000
Adjusting
for the increasing numbers of aides of the president, ministers,
governors and legislators, it is not unreasonable to put the total
number of those working directly for governments at about three million.
So while our national population has increased by about 160% between
1960 and 1999, the size of our public service increased by 350% in the
same period. Our public service is clearly over-bloated.
Other
initial diagnostics and findings of the PSRT were sobering to say the
least. The civil service was rapidly ageing, mostly untrained and
largely under-educated. Their average age then was 42 years, and over
60% were over 40 years. Less than 12% of the public servants held
university degrees or equivalent. Over 70% of the service were of the
junior grades 01-06, of sub-clerical and equivalent skills. About 20% of
the public service employees were 'ghost workers' - non-existent people
on the payroll which goes to staff of personnel and accounts
departments. In the FCT, out of an initial headcount of 26,000, we found
3,000 ghosts in the first round of audit. By the time we introduced
biometric ID and centralized, computerized payroll, we found nearly
2,500 who failed to show up for documentation!
While
the public service pay is low relative to the cost of living, the
overall burden of payroll as a percentage of the budget is huge. In most
states other than Lagos, Kano, Kaduna and Rivers States, an average of
50% of the budget goes towards the payment of salaries - to about 1% of
their population - an unfair and unsustainable state of affairs! Out of
the N2,425 billion included in the 2011 Budget for recurrent
expenditure, between 73% and 84% for each MDA constitutes personnel
cost. We found in 2005 that the breakdown of federal public service
emoluments by class of service as follows:
· Core Civil Service - 18%
· Military, Police and Paramilitary - 35%
· Parastatals, Education and Health - 47%
The
PSRT inherited a federal public service whose central management organs
- the FCSC and the office of the Head of Civil Service of the
Federation had become inept and ineffective, and morally flexible at
best. We learnt that appointments, promotion examinations, promotions,
postings and discipline were bought and sold by civil servants the same
way shares are traded on the stock market. Surprisingly and with some
relief, we did not see these malfunctions in the armed services. The HR
system of the Army, Navy and the Air Force were intact, and to some
extent even the Police and other paramilitary services had better human
resource management systems.
In a State of Denial?
The
bulk of the public servants continue to be in denial and have refused
to take responsibility for the sorry state of affairs, blaming their
political masters for the dysfunction in the public service. They blame
the collapse of merit and excellence in the public service on the
Murtala-Obasanjo retirements "with immediate effect" that occurred in
the mid-1970s. Others attribute the current situation to the Civil
Service Reform Decree No. 43 of 1988 of the Babangida administration.
The deterioration of pay and fringe benefits relative to the cost of
living as a result of the Structural Adjustment Program in the late
1980s has also been identified as contributory to the de-motivation,
deskilling and dispiriting of the public service.
The
truth may be a combination of all three and more, compounded by the
inability of the public service to update its attitudes, working
methods, skills and technology. The public service has been short-term
in its vision, self-centered in policy formulation and corrupt in
programme implementation. Instead, it has focused on taking care of
itself and interests to the detriment of the nation and system which
sustains it. The public service failed to reform itself between 2001 and
2005 when two successive Heads of Civil Service were tasked to do so.
It was therefore inevitable that driving the public service reforms of
2005-2007 had to be transferred to the economic team, with President
Obasanjo leading the charge himself. An outsider was needed to
administer the required medicine, but still needed the cooperation of
the patient, which was not forthcoming.
Public Service Reforms in Perspective
It
is therefore uncontestable that the public service became dysfunctional
following years of neglect and failure to reform. The public service
was both large and unwieldy, accountability was weak and professional
standards low. The federal bureaucracy has also sprawled with
considerable overlap of functions between agencies, and between tiers
and arms of government. There was an urgent need for both civil service
and parastatals reforms, and in spite of all efforts, little progress
has been made in that regard.
The
need to improve the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the public
service have been recognized from pre-independence days by instituting
several administrative reforms. The first of these was the Tudor Davis
Commission of 1945-46. The Morgan Commission of 1963 not only revised
salaries and wages of junior staff of the federal government but
introduced for the first time a minimum wage for each region of the
country. The more recent ones include the commissions headed by Simeon
Adebo (1971), Jerome Udoji (1972), Dotun Philips (1986) and the Allison
Ayida Panel (1995). The Dotun Philips reforms properly and correctly
aligned the civil service structure with the constitution and
presidential system of government , designating permanent secretaries as
directors-general and deputy ministers. Unfortunately, the reforms
devolved human resource functions with respect to junior cadres to
ministries with disastrous consequences which needed dealing with.
The
Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR) was established in September
2003 as an independent agency in the Presidency to ensure the reform of
all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of all arms and
branches of the federal government, and submit quarterly reports to the
President. The Public Service Reform Team (PSRT) had the BPSR as its
secretariat and met weekly every Tuesday to deliver on its mandate.
Some of the achievements of that round of reforms include:
1.
Restructuring of Pilot Ministries, Departments and Agencies
(MDAs): The PSRT produced two generic guidelines approved by the
Federal Executive Council (FEC) in March 2006 for the reform and
restructuring of MDAs and Parastatals. Initially 5 pilot MDAs
volunteered for restructuring and this was expanded to 14. This entailed
cleaning up the staff headcount and payroll, and redesigning the MDA
structure to have between 4 and 8 departments and 2-4 divisions per
department. These were approved by the FEC on May 16th, 2007 and
applicable to all MDAs immediately.
2.
Cleaning up of Civil Service and Parastatals Nominal Rolls: The
Oronsaye committee of the PSRT developed eight criteria for the
retirement of public servants to enable the clean-up of the headcount
and reducing the negative impact of the devolution of HR functions to
MDAs in 1988, and the failures of the FCSC and OHCSF to discharge their
functions. An appeals process was put in place to minimize
victimization and errors.
For
the civil service, about 45,000 names were prepared by MDAs and
forwarded to BPSR for consideration and approval by PSRT, and then
forwarded to the FCSC for removal. An initial batch of 36,843 officers
were put through pre-retirement training, disengaged and paid about N24
billion as their severance entitlements. Unfortunately, about 20,000 of
these severed civil servants have found their ways back into the civil
service, thereby defeating the clean-up exercise.
For
the 400 or so parastatals and paramilitary services, the estimated
number of staff to be severed was 75,575 at a cost about N57 billion.
Parastatals reform and right-sizing was to be undertaken jointly by BPSR
and the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE). Sadly, this was never fully
realized.
3.
Monetization of Fringe Benefits: All benefits-in-kind like free
housing, furnishing, car and driver for various cadres of public
servants and political office holders were abolished for ministers,
permanent secretaries and equivalent cadres and below. All
government-owned houses except 13 classes of official residences were
sold to occupants or via public bids. All official vehicles were
discounted by 50% and sold to officials. Other pool and utility vehicles
were auctioned in public bids. Personal drivers, cooks and cleaners
were laid off and made staff of the affected officials.
4.
Pay Reform and Medium-Term Pay Policy: The Ernest Shonekan Pay
Review Report was referred to PSRT for consideration and implementation.
Shonekan found that public service pay was on average 25% of private
sector for the same or similar jobs. A pay increase of 15% was therefore
recommended and effected in January 2007, with a plan to increase pay
by 10% per annum but linked to productivity such that in 5 years, near
pay parity with the private sector will be achieved.
5.
Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS): This
is a computerized, biometric platform intended to provide a reliable
and comprehensive database of employees in the public service to
facilitate manpower planning, and eliminate headcount and payroll fraud.
IPPIS approved by the FEC in February 2006 and implemented in phases.
The first phase covering 6 MDAs and the central management organizations
of the public service went live in April 2007, saving N416 million from
the payroll of the 12 agencies in its first month! Sadly, the vested
interests in the public service have frustrated its mainstreaming and
application to cover all MDAs and other public service organizations
since then.
6.
Review and Update of Public Service Rules and Financial
Regulations: The BPSR undertook a holistic review of the Public Service
Rules and Financial Regulations and produced a White Paper which was
amended and approved by the FEC on 9th May 2007.
Another
review committee led by Adamu Fika lamented the low morale and
widespread malaise in the service and observed that the integrity
deficits in the FCSC and the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the
Federation are responsible for inefficiencies and corruption that have
become pervasive in the service.
Next Steps in Reforming the Public Service
This
administration has a unique opportunity to correct these by appointing
not only a reformist head of civil service, but the nomination of the
chair and members of FCSC within the next few weeks with the mandate to
clean up the service, and build on the reforms of 2005 to 2009.
The
next steps are clear. Learn from recent past, build on foundations laid
by PSRT and correct any errors we made. The quality of the public
service must be improved by attracting the best and brightest. This
requires reducing the current pay disparity between the public and
private sectors of the economy. To rejuvenate the service, new blood
must be injected at all levels from the academia, private sector and
Nigerian Diaspora based on merit. These will be impossible unless the
ageing and un-trainable public servants take early retirement.
Who
can perform in today's work environment without the knowledge of IT, of
using Google, Twitter and BlackBerry messaging tools? Any public
servant that cannot use the computer and its various tools ought to give
way to our army of young people that can. The number of MDAs
duplicating functions, and their manning levels must be reviewed
downwards to enable our nation afford the higher pay that our public
servants deserve. We cannot maintain the same numbers we have and pay
them any higher.
All
these require careful thought, thorough collection and analysis of
data, and political will. Our public service is once again at a
cross-roads. It is up to the President to make the choices necessary to
make it better, or much worse.
Nasir
Ahmad El-Rufai, OFR was Senior Policy Adviser to General Abdulsalami
Abubakar (1998-99), Director-General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises
(1999-2003), Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Member of the
Economic Team, (2003-2007) and Chairman of the Public Service Reform
Team (2005-2007).
