By Tony Afejuku

The other burning issue, apart from Farotimi and Babalola’s, which I wish to take a look at – and which I am taking a look at now – relates to what is happening in our capital territory. What is this burning issue – which our human rightists and civil society organisations and personages are surprisingly and un-satisfactorily not inclined to focus attention on and examine as they should? I may be wrong, but it surely seems to me that this issue, this burning issue, which is of more importance than Farotimi and Babalola’s – which has been given undue adulation – is deliberately being neglected and depreciated by proclaimers and heroes and heroines of human rights, justice, equity and equality of rights in your country my country our country. Why, why, why and why, why, why? Anyone who has any iota of patriotic sensibility, feeling and judgment well watered and buttressed by a very great influence upon his or her critical judgment will keep on asking the question I am asking.

Mr. Nyesom Wike, as almost everybody who can read and write a little knows, is the current minister of your, my and our Federal Capital Territory. His post or office is akin to that of a governor of a state. As the immediate past governor of Rivers State who was drafted, after his two terms there expired, to continue in the FCT as its new minister-governor or governor-minister under the auspices of a party he is not a true member of, Mr. Wike cannot but be seen as a lucky man. He is in every possible and impossible way. Minister-Governor Wike is a lucky man and a very fortunate one indeed. No former governor of Rivers State (or of any Nigerian state), as far as I know, has achieved what the famed political rouser of rabbles has achieved in one short gubernatorial life-time, and at a relatively young and fertile age. His dual achievement with and in two different political parties at this delicate point of Nigerian politics indicates to our politicians and us all that there is always time for a reminder that there are ready-made high rewards for arch-angels of betrayals. And Mr. Wike may go down in Rivers and Nigerian history as both an arch-angel and an emperor of betrayal of us all if we attempt to indicate what I have defined here as his dual achievement.

We can roughly divide, briefly, Wike’s political development into two periods. During the first, excluding his lower political positions before he became the governor of Rivers State, he quickly adapted his style to that of an emperor who became a rabble-rouser of rabble-rousers whose gubernatorial efficiency moved from stiffness to stiffness. He did not at any time feel that he needed suppleness to govern Rivers State. “Let the heavens fall if they must fall!” We are not there yet in this attempted analysis of the stiff-hearted and stiff-minded one. True? But he is already demonstrating this characteristic in Abuja. False? Judge and give the answer yourself.

Even after he left Rivers State a short while ago as governor, he is still trying to control happenings there to the political discomfiture of his hand-picked successor, his erstwhile “boy” and “son” – with whom he has fallen out. As the minister-governor or governor-minister of the FCT, Wike is occupied with the other taste of the emperor-juggernaut formulator – doing the work of two key political masters in one room and desk of political jugglery. Since his appearance in the FCT, minister-governor or governor-minister Wike has allegedly attempted to recover or transform for Abuja what is not traditionally or socially Abuja’s, for example, the city’s social idiom and landscape and terrain as well as its environs. In doing this he sometimes over-steps his bounds and mark of human/inhuman decency/indecency and psychological understanding of human nature, if you follow well what I am saying; he has so far become at best not really better than a typical pedestrian Nigerian lawyer and officer of political power: in his explorations so far in the Federal Capital Territory we have come to the realization, as T. S. Eliot would say, that “it is so often true that only by going too far can we find out how far we can go.” But one has to be a very negatively obstinate and self-serving emperor and a thorough-bred arch-angel of betrayal of the people and masses to justify such perilous and perfidious expeditions and adventures.

Last week, I saw on Arise Television “The Morning Show” Chief Rita Lori-Ogbebor, the dutiful widow of the late Nigerian supreme patriot and soldier, Colonel Ogbebor (of Benin stock) battling, so to say, to wrest the legacy of her late husband from the tight grip of the adventurous FCT minister-governor who has registered his name and signature in the hearts and consciousness of the people as the depriver of their possessions. The three anchors of “The Morning Show” were in their respective ways splendid in their structures of remarks and questions to Chief (Mrs.) Rita Lori-Ogbebor whom I have had occasions in times past to call patriotically Rita A-K 47 on account of her natural right to fire her beautiful tongue at any person, usually an enemy, of just actions. When she made the case she made to protect the estate of Paulosa Nigeria Limited, her late husband’s aforesaid legacy in the FCT, she was in her natural territory, habitat and element where even at age eighty-four, she never ever loses her stability – although she unusually restrained herself in the Arise Television appearance. Dr. Reuben Abati, Rufai Oseni, and Ayo Mairo-Ese clearly explored seriously but delightfully the mind of the mother-hen of Warri – my other coinage and appellation I gave her in my poetry. Her “The Morning Show” appearance enabled me to see the poignant cry de profundis of the FCT inhabitants whose property and residences in different guises have been demolished. She did not say anything that was out of joint. She spoke and came out as a mother, protector and symbol of the people who have suffered – and are suffering – from the state of affliction and anguish Wike’s demolitions have placed – and are placing – the people.

Ojy Okpe in her delicious and delectable “What is Trending” slot on the same show, showed without exaggeration but with further elaboration what people in and outside Abuja/FCT think of the mighty Wike’s demolitions, a burning issue that the Senate has asked “Let Heaven Fall” minister-governor Wike to halt as the committee the Senate set up on the issue starts its work. Of course, we cannot but assume that Chief Rita Lori-Ogbebor, Mrs. Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan as well as Mrs. Ireti Kingigbe, the senator representing the FCT in the Senate and other patriotic senators diligently did what they did on the floor of the Senate when the burning issue was tabled for debate with the gracious understanding and authorization of the Senate President.

I need to state further that the “The Morning Show” anchors did well and extremely so by giving the minister-governor the opportunity to air his anti-Paulosa story. His senior special assistant on public communication and social media, Mr. Olalere Olayinka, stood in for him. After he gave the reasons for the clamp-down, his responses to the questions the anchors put to him followed the usual pattern of denials by artificial men in power – denials that they always use to intimidate and betray the people. In fact, Mr. Olayinka’s ploy to ride easily over our dear Rufai Oseni, a wholesome representative of the deprived, that the chap (or is it guy?) and his boss always employ their colloquial speeches and remarks to dishonor, failed. Yes, the ploy failed woefully. In stanza after stanza of the exchanges between Mr. Olayinka and the Arise anchors, he deteriorated – and his deterioration was hall-marked when he unwittingly revealed that the Paulosa land had been acquired by his minister-governor’s close cohort, an act that was nothing short of gross abuse of power and authority.

Because the Senate is already using its authority, power and privilege to resolve the burning issue, hopefully, in a way that the late Colonel Ogbebor’s legacy and family will not be subjected to any kind of degradation, I will utter no more words for now. I trust, however, that the liberties the Senate is taking – or has taken – are for the sake of order to favour the down-trodden.

As for the minister-governor, the PDP emperor at large, here is an immortal quote from Marcus Aurelius, the magnificent and authentic Roman Emperor and philosopher (A.D. 121-180): “If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it.” You lose nothing by giving us a slice of your humanity by your right acts and correct words. Everything changes and passes. Be humane as a human being.

Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.

By Leo Igwe

Recently, I facilitated a critical thinking workshop at the Bay Wreath Schools in Lagos. The theme was critical thinking and teacher development. As the theme stated, the workshop was on teaching, about teaching, and for teachers. It highlighted the pedagogical value of critical and reflective inquiry. The workshop exposed teachers to critical mental habits and skills. It emphasized how critical thinking would enhance expertise in the learning and delivery of subjects in classrooms.

I used the opportunity to discuss questionstorm as a method of teaching and learning. Questionstorm is a way that I operationalized critical thinking for primary and elementary schools. Questionstorm is the ability to interrogate all objects and materials. It is a habit of questioning ideas and experiences in all areas of human endeavor. Simply put, questionstorm is a question-driven inquiry. Children are naturally curious. They thirst for knowledge and understanding. Unfortunately, the school system kills children’s curiosity and dampens their interrogative appetite. The school system places much emphasis on rote learning and memorization. It makes the generation of answers not questions or problems the test of knowledge, and the determinant of intelligence. Teaching is largely a drudgery, a monotonous exercise, and a process of depositing knowledge on passive recipients, the students. Teaching entails dumping information on learners whose duty is to cram and reproduce during tests or examinations.

This teaching praxis has been criticized and blamed for the poor performance of students post-school (college and university) and their inability to think independently, creatively, and innovatively. Other teaching methods have tried to address these gaps and limitations. There have been suggestions to make teaching and instruction more active, and more student/learner/child-centered. One such method is the Montessori method. The Montessori method discourages grades and tests as ways of measuring achievement or determining intelligence and excellence. It emphasizes hands-on learning and the development of real-world skills. While the Montessori method stresses the practical approach to learning it says very little about the authoritarian teacher-to-student approach that is the mainstay of teaching and learning in classrooms. Teaching follows a pattern that leaves students and learners in the margins and unable to question and contribute to the learning process. Teachers present what is to be learned such as a text, and then generate questions that students respond or address to demonstrate knowledge of what has been taught. The student’s or learner’s main job is to answer questions, to look for or find answers or solutions. The teacher’s work is to get students to look for, and provide answers, and reproduce what they have been taught or told. But students are answer-depots. Students are not memory banks or reserves. They are active minds and thinking agents.

With questionstorm as a teaching method, the mode of instruction would change. Teaching becomes a cooperative endeavor that actively involves teachers and students. What is taught in the classroom is a collaborative note, not the teacher’s note, not a handout to students. Teachers present or generate texts or objects for learning, in response to intense questioning of the object or material by students, teachers provide information as required for that subject, topic, level, and time frame. No two instances of teaching – of the same topic or subject- are or should be the same because the input of students and teachers is not predetermined.
This is because of an overlooked principle in teaching and learning, that I call the “uncertainty principle”.

The uncertainty principle underlies questionstorm because knowledge is not fixed. Learning is a fluid process. All that is to be learned is uncertain, it is unknown and never determined. No teacher can say beforehand what is to be taught or learned because no one knows exactly the questions and answers or replies that would arise when a topic is presented or taught in a particular class. A topic or learning material elicits unique responses and exchanges that both teachers and students cannot exactly know or predict a priori, before the fact.

Teaching is a shared task and responsibility. Class notes are fluid materials. They are not texts cast on educational stones and delivered by teachers to students to copy, cut, and paste as is often the case. Class notes are not written or produced by teachers for students but by teachers with students. Teachers’ notes are incomplete and insufficient. They account only for a part, not a whole of the learning process and material. Students’ input completes and complements the teaching material and learning process. Thus every class note is unique because it is a product of a specific collaborative endeavor, a product of particular teaching and learning agents and circumstances that cannot be repeated or replicated.

Thus, as a teaching method, questionstorm is set to facilitate teacher development and improve the quality of instruction in schools. Questionstorm will help realize a paradigm shift in education and learning. I hope educators, teachers, and school managers will embrace this method of teaching and learning.

Dr  Igwe directs the Critical Thinking Social Empowerment Foundation.

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By Tunji Olaopa

From November 25 to 28, 2024, the Katsina State government hosted the annual conference of the National Council for Civil Service Commissions (NCCSC). This is coming on the heel of a hiatus of over ten years. This fact in itself immediately speaks to a significant issue in the ineffectiveness of the gatekeeping function of the civil service commissions in Nigeria. If the body in charge of the gatekeepers has failed for over ten years to adjudicate on their effectiveness or otherwise, it raises a cause for concern. However, the conference’s theme—“The Role of the Civil Service Commissions in Driving the Renewed Hope Agenda”—signals a readiness of the NCCSC to regain its constitutional function in regulating the affairs of the civil service commissions in Nigeria as a means of getting the public service to function effectively as a mechanism for democratic governance and development effectiveness.

Apart from my keynote as the chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC), three significant technical sessions were also facilitated by distinguished resource persons who are well-versed in the signifiers of the defining challenges that the public service faces from their different vantage points of expertise. Professor Adeola Adenikinju is the president of the Nigerian Economic Society and had been involved in national planning designs, macro-economic policy change management and advisories for decades; Mr Soji Apampa, the founder of the Convention on Business Integrity, had contributed to conversations and praxis in the building of national integrity systems as systemic bulwark in the anti-corruption campaign, and as an essential pillar in the values reorientation dimension to national cultural adjustment dynamic; and Prof. Abdullahi Shehu, a professor of criminology, is the former Nigerian ambassador to the Russian Federation, has core expertise in capacity building on anti-corruption policies and mechanisms, promoting integrity as a vital component of governance and institutional reforms, and anti-money laundering and terrorism financing. Between the three of them, they highlighted several fundamental issues. First, there is the critical role that the civil servants must play in deploying transparency, accountability, professionalism and innovation in facilitating the efficient and effective implementation of the key priority areas of the Renewed Hope Agenda of the Tinubu administration.

In my keynote, I laid a fundamental emphasis on the transformation of the CSCs as the ultimate game changing agent that is committed to a renewed governance partnership with the government through the institutional reform of the public service. And the objective of this reform is to achieve the re-institution of a professionalized, competency-based, meritocratic, and efficient value institution in Nigeria through the effective monitoring of the constitutional gatekeeping mandate. This demands that the CSCs be capacitated sufficiently to facilitate, in the shortest possible time, the emergence of a new generation of public managers who are patriotically committed to the reconstitution of the public service for effective and efficient service delivery in Nigeria. This will demand, within the framework of the renewed governance partnership, the establishment of performance contract with the employees of the MDAs, and a service compact with the communities of service and practice of public administration in Nigeria, as well as with the Nigerian citizenry. This compact will instigate the generation of flagship reform and service initiatives, change programmes, peer review platforms and learning events that will likely keep the various CSCs of the federation engaged all year round.

A brief historical excursion will throw into broad relief the emergence of the civil service commission as the handmaiden of the British government in ensuring the institutional sanitation of the British civil service as the fulcrum of meritocratic efficiency. It will also firmly ground the significant relevance of the Katsina Declaration as a critical watershed in getting the CSCs to gatekeep the vocational significance of the civil service in making the Renewed Hope Agenda crucial for the betterment of Nigerians. Through its evolution from the ancient pharaonic Egyptian society to the monarchy in Britain, it had been difficult for public administration, or the appointment of public servants, to be divorced from the whims of the king or the emperor. Indeed, the Crown deployed the civil service as a system of patronage that was, of course, determined by political consideration and ridden with corruption. It is a system that flouts the politics-administration distinction which is meant to separate between politics and administrative matter for a meritocratic administrative efficiency. However, by the time the Magna Carta had been crafted in the 13th century, there was already a growing need to separate politics and administration, and orient the status of the civil servants on the state and not the Crown.

Much later, and specifically in 1782, a series of economic reform programmes were initiated to effectively deal with the system of royal patronage and decrease the influence of the King on the legislature. Even though this reform had a political motive, its unintended consequence on administration was the emergence of an efficient and non-political civil service. In other words, as the officials who were gradually removed from political activities became more non-political, they also increasingly became more permanent. It then became increasingly impossible for any of these administrators to lose their positions on political grounds. The early eighteenth-century Britain therefore began to see the gradual rise of non-party officials who remain in place when government changes. This led to the second reason that facilitated the separation between politics and administration. As administration was consolidating its autonomy, politics was equally becoming more complex for a minister to ever think of combining it with administrative activities.

It was at this period that the term “civil servants”, as opposed to the military servants deployed by the East India Company, was first used in India. By this time, it was already settled that a permanent civil service could only be secured by the establishment of a security of tenure for public servants. On the other side of the Atlantic in the United States, the Pendelton Act of 1883 was promulgated to undermine the spoil system which made political patronage the basis of recruitment into the service. The Act recognized the significance of competitive examinations as the basis for ensuring merit in the recruitment of civil servants. It was founded on three specific objectives: (a) the use of competitive examinations for admission into public service; (b) provided job security for public employees; (c) prohibited political activity by the civil service; and (d) encouraged a non-partisan approach to an employee selection

However, by 1854 two very significant reform reports were submitted that would transform the administrative efficiency of the British civil service and redeem its status as a noble vocation. The Report on the Indian Civil Service and the Northcote-Trevelyan Report were both meant to safeguard the system against recruitment practices that will undermine the relevance and utility of the civil service for the British government. The Report on the Indian Civil Service was meant to institute specific intellectual tests which will constitute the moral standard for cultivating unique qualities—“industry, self-denial, a taste for pleasure, not sensual, a laudable desire for honorable distinction, a still more laudable desire to obtain the approbation of friends and relations”—that will stand the civil servants out as public spirited and professional.

On the other hand, the Northcote-Trevelyan Report is even more revealing. In specific terms, the Report was based on four basic premises: Recruitment into the Civil Service should be by open competitive examinations which would be conducted by an independent Civil Service Board that would ensure that entry into the service would be entirely on the basis of merit.

Entrants should not be recruited for life into a specific department but would enter a Home Civil Service that would facilitate inter-departmental staff transfers. Civil servants, therefore, would need to have had a general education and to be generalist rather than specialist in their knowledge and experience. Recruits would be segregated at entry into a hierarchical structure of grades, ranging from the lowest (mechanical) level of clerical officers, only capable of simple routine task, up to the most elevated (intellectual) administrative level which would provide the ranks of senior civil servants who exist to assist and guide ministers in the formulation and administration of policy. Promotion ought only to be on the basis of merit and should not be on the ground of preferment, patronage, purchase or simple length of service (Pilkington, 1999: 19).

These two reports inaugurated the emergence of the civil service commission in Britain. There are two implications for the civil service system in the Commonwealth that inherited the British administrative system. The first is the understanding of the politics-administration dynamics that specifies the relationship between the minister and the civil servants. In other words, the CSC becomes the institutional mechanism that would ensure that the civil service system retains its objective of producing intelligent, efficient and effective public servants that would be able to help implement government policies. The second implication is the emergence of the cadre system which ensures that entry into the civil service is gained through competitive examinations. This served as the basis for the establishment of a generalist class—administrative, executive and clerical—as the administrative echelon of the civil service system in a descending hierarchical order of responsibilities and qualifications.

If, as it has become clear from the bureau-pathology of the civil service in Nigeria (and the various technical sessions at the Conference), that we have not kept faith with the founding mandate that inaugurated the CSC as the gatekeeping mechanism for constantly reinventing the civil service as a noble calling, how do we then commence that reform? What are the fundamental next steps to be taken in pushing the CSCs in the right reform directions? The ultimate objective is the restoration of the CSC as the efficient gatekeeper for professionalism and service integrity enabled by a constitutional mandate to serve as the defender and protector of a merit system grounded on competency-based human resource management practices in the civil service.

Six fundamental steps are possible to get the CSCs in Nigeria to this ultimate objective. One: there is the need to professionalize the CSC secretariat so as to capacitate it as the core change space for resolving all human resource and other related issues concerning the public administration profession in Nigeria. Two: there is the correlated urgency to modernize the processes and services of the secretariat through continuing digitization that will enable it to eliminate barriers to creativity and innovation in the service delivery mandate of the public service. Three: the various CSCs need to review and upgrade the guidelines for appointment, promotion and discipline in the civil services, as well as reinforce the standard operating procedures across the various CSCs as a mean of guiding against sharp practices, the politicization of staff career management, and the enforcement of strict compliance with the rules of law and the constitutional order in all operations. With regard to promotion, there is the need, for instance, to institute a performance-based promotion system rooted in competency and project-based assessments. Four: it is also imperative to undertake a comprehensive review of the CSC’s delegated powers to the MDAs in terms of operational guidelines with a view to strengthening oversight, compliance and enforcement. Five: it becomes imperative that all CSCs must strategically collaborate with their respective heads of service to undertake and facilitate the value audit of the civil service that will achieve the objective of enforcing discipline in terms of the code of conduct and code of ethics of the civil service. This will be to articulate a cultural adjustment programme and value reorientation of the civil service as a noble calling. Six: the CSCs must embark on studies to profile changes and transformations in the emerging new public service, especially in terms of the new normal demanded by COVID-19 transformation of the workplace, the increasing changes enforced in the nature of administrative processes due to new digital technologies and artificial intelligences, and the peculiar sociological imperatives of emergence of the Gen Z and Gen Alpha and their impact on the nature of work. This new normal articulates urgent administrative measures that are demanded for situating the public service within the urgency of relevance for the fourth and fifth industrial revolutions. Seventh and finally: each CSC must align these new reform directions and imperatives with their implications for industrial relations. The plan must be to shift the focus away from the adversarial to developmental labour activism and relations that make possible sustainable change agenda in the public sector.

Setting out on these reform directions requires specific reform strategies and focus of implementation. It demands, in other words, change management requirements that are specific for getting the CSCs up to speed in its intent of achieving its constitutional role as the powerhouse for the enforcement of merit-based competency in the civil service. The NCCSC Conference threw up lots of strategic reconsiderations that promise significant reform rewards—in terms of facilitating the “Katsina Declaration”—for advancing the effectiveness and efficiency of the civil service in Nigeria as a world-class institution for backstopping democratic governance and the Renewed Hope Agenda of the Tinubu administration.

One fundamental and pressing business the Conference threw up which has an overarching impact on not only firming the rearticulation of the public service as a new institutional brand—as a vocational calling—is the urgency of promulgating a Public Service Act as a legal tool for codifying the instrumental efficiency of civil service governance and operations. The need for the Act derives from the argument that the inherited administrative codes such as public service rules, financial regulation, guideline on administrative procedures, etc., which have their deep roots in the British unwritten constitution tradition, have become outdated, especially in the light of contemporary postcolonial realities in Nigeria. This is also more so that the British that bequeathed this administrative tradition has evolved beyond it to enact numerous legislations for the governance of the public service. This Public Service Act also has deep implication for strategically revisiting the staffing requirements of the civil service, but specifically that of the CSCs. This speaks, for instance, first to the generalist framework that constitutes the CSC secretariats’ skills set. This framework grossly limits the CSCs and their problem-solving capacity to resolve various career management issues involving staff. This is further complicated by the high turnover rate and other challenges associated with staffing the CSC from the civil service common pool.

The next strategic consideration derives from the urgency of digitization and automation that must be the basis of modernizing the CSCs’ critical operations. Recruitment, for example, requires online application portals that are back-ended by effective databases. Promotion also demands online recalibration in terms of accreditation and CBT assessments. Discipline and appeals can be fast-tracked through the deployment of software that tracks reports, cases and processes. Civil service commissions will need to be capacitated to be much more effective and efficient within the context of available funds and resourcing frameworks. The FCSC and the state CSC will therefore need to become creative in sourcing for a range of technical supports to raise funds that will enable critical studies.

First, there is the need to reinvent the CSC founding mandate to deepen guidelines that undergird merit in entry-level assessment and to infuse better contents and standards to, for instance, review quality of the syllabi and questions in the computer-based tests at promotion exams. Second, the CSCs need to deepen the guidelines for grounding the application of the federal character policy on merit and meritocratic parameters in the recruitment process. Third, the CSCs need to initiate diagnostic studies to unravel the structural bottlenecks hindering career progression of officers as a means by which to reinvent manpower planning, manpower forecasting and succession planning that articulate a better framework for monitoring the size and growth of service through internal management controls.

Lastly, the Katsina Declaration emphasized the need to keep the modernizing imperative in sight through the constant organization of seminar events, both virtual and physical, that keep the attention of the CSCs firmly on new and emerging trends and global practices in human resource practices that keep the Commissions on their toes in terms of their constitutional mandate in the new administrative normal.
The Katsina Declaration constitutes another turning point, and a crucial one at that, in facilitating the reawakening of the CSCs to their constitutional mandate. And this is even more fundamental at this period when the Tinubu administration really demands that the civil service regain its effectiveness to be able to translate the policies of government into dividends of democratic governance.

Olaopa is the Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission, Abuja, and Professor of Public Administration.
tolaopa2003@gmail.com