As the Federal Government grapples with the challenges of making the public sector productive amid dwindling revenue, the Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission (FRSC) Prof Tunji Olaopa has charted a path forward.

Olaopa who spoke during the final leg of his maiden interactive session with the staff of the commission on February 1 disclosed the objectives of these inaugural sessions. They included to institute a basic element of the management system that must be in place for any organization to succeed, which is constant interaction that enables internal communication between management and the workforce. The second objective is to discuss with the staff the expectation of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the reconstituted Commission.

Listing the keys to unlock the productivity of the public service, Olaopa said that the Implementation of the Oronsaye Panel’s Report should be a fundamental step.

He said: “The Oronsaye Report constitutes a significant first condition in reflecting on and executing the cost of governance reform that the government requires to effect the productivity paradigm shift.

“But it requires constitutional, legislative and administrative diligence and caution. This is because any haphazard implementation of the mergers, acquisition and eliminations of parastatals recommended by the Oronsaye Report, if not properly managed, will result in the collapse of an already fragile administrative system.

“One immediate consequence of the cost of governance reform will be the need to conduct a rigorous public expenditure review (PER). The results of such broad PER will then be utilized to determine new budget ceilings for each ministry and agencies within a medium-term expenditure framework.”

He listed the second important step as human resource accounting. Explaining this, Olaopa said: “We believe that restoring confidence in the capacity of the public service to transform the lives of Nigerians requires robust action with a fresh start from HR accounting. If the public service accounts for 20% of national employment and its annual wage bill alone is 15% of GDP, then Nigerians have the right to demand from us that the public service must account for tangible returns on such huge investments in it before it can justifiably demand enhanced conditions of service.”

Olaopa mentioned the third factor for a robust public service as instituting a new productivity paradigm .

According to him, “It is imperative to institute a new productivity paradigm in the civil service. And that calls for a whole paradigm shift from the Douglas McGregor Theory X business model of an ‘I am directed’ civil service to a more entrepreneurial Theory Y model. Let me break this down in a simpler language.

“I can say it categorically that an average Nigerian public servant is one of the most overworked government functionaries in the world. I know because it was something I experienced all through my time in service and keep experiencing all around me.

“There is no one who has not witnessed the routine of an average and diligent civil or public servant – and believe me there are so many of them. She must wake up very early to be punctual, depending on where she lives and works—say, Lagos Mainland to Lagos Island, or Nyanya to the Abuja central district. She hardly gets a breathing space during working hours, again depending on what sector she is in and the manpower dynamics there. And she closes rather late due to the volume of work which leaves her exhausted, combined with the stress of getting back home in terrible traffic. If such exertion is what is required for productivity of the public service, then Nigeria ought to have been among the most productive countries in the world.

“Unfortunately, the reality of Nigerians and their encounter with the public service system—backed by significant literature on the bureaucratic dynamics of the public administration (which I have contributed to in my several studies)—demonstrate quite cogently that the daily drudgery of an average and diligent public servant does not translate into the workplace productivity that Nigeria requires.

“The reality is stark indeed: Nigerians now are compelled to prefer private to public schools; neighborhood watches and vigilantes have displaced statutory security agencies in enforcing security nationwide; electricity generation keeps coming short of its desired optimal level, and hence the supplies offered by distribution companies have become rather inadequate backup to privately generated power; and ministers are forced to depend on experts and consultancies services rather than the competence and expertise of long-serving civil servants. This essentially tells us that the public service is not working, and that there is a fundamental difference in being busy and being productive through the creation of public value.

“This dysfunction, I must add, is not the fault of the civil servants, who are themselves victims who put in their best daily but do not know why they are ceaselessly derided, nonetheless. They are simply trapped in a system that is outmoded, overly bureaucratic and in perpetual transitions, a system wherein too many do nothing, too many do too little, and too few do too much.

According to Olaopa, a productive public service is far-fetched without transforming its IQ. In this regard, he said that the commission’s recruitment modality and promotion must become the baseline for transforming the IQ of the public service in creative ways to address the competence and skills deficits and for talent management and leadership pipelining.

“This means that the reform must restore the reputation of the service as the preferred employer in attracting, managing and retaining talents and skills. We will strengthen human resource planning and the entrance assessment process to ensure that recruitment meets strategic staffing needs and is based on merit. We will review and upgrade career management systems and processes, including schemes of service, job descriptions, deployments and records-keeping.

“We will ensure that training and testing enhance job performance and career development while also meeting the strategic staffing and capacity building objectives of the service over the medium to long term, including increasing the pool of internal experts and thereby reducing the need for a plethora of costly extra-ministerial entities and consultants that have too frequently become substitutes for civil servants.

“We will seek to improve the performance management system through more robust target-setting that links individual performance to corporate performance and a much more rigorous and transparent system of 360 evaluations, rewards and sanctions that similarly integrate individual and corporate performance and encourage feedback from service users and citizens. We will also ensure that the disciplinary process is remodeled within the framework of stringent culture-change that maps workplace behavior and performance and is transparent, fair and consistent.

“To achieve all this requires that the Commission, the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, and the body of permanent secretaries and other related entities work collaboratively to generate with utmost speed a Civil Service Renewed Hope Agenda and Action Plan which implementation is driven by stakeholders”, he said.

Stressing the importance of resolving the “Wage and Incentive Dilemma”, Olaopa said that the crisis-ridden public service wage and incentive structure must be resolved if Government will ever be a preferred employer that can attract and retain persons with badly needed policy, managerial and leadership skills required to transform Nigeria.

He said: “The most devastating dimension of the civil service HR system’s crisis was the collapse of the pay and remuneration system which justifiably provoked adversarial industrial and labour relations. The causative factors were the making of policy makers and politicians over the years, and not the fault of the innocent civil servants.

“Recall that after independence, the public service pay-levels were relatively reasonable. It was in the oil boom era of the early ‘70s, and with the implementation of the Udoji bonanza in 1974 in a manner that discounted the weightier managerial changes to support such wage levels, the wage levels in the public sector got disconnected from the productivity trajectory in the national economy. As the economy depreciated, revenue faltered, but staffing numbers continued to rise, driven by the ever-expanding role of a state that used public service employment as a welfare scheme and in pursuit of the Federal character policy. Pay-levels thus became stagnant, with low wages eventually becoming irredeemably the norm.

“By the mid-80s, retiring officers had started to cope with a pension scheme that was formidably less than purchasing power, while serving officers earned subsistence wages. This collapse of the pay-system inexorably destroyed the employment contract between the government and the public employees. Informality, combined with indiscipline, moonlighting, etc. set in and performance plummeted, the results of a distorted workforce structure wherein too many do nothing, too many do too little, and too few do too much.

“Systemic dysfunction resulted, with professionals with scarce skills leaving to find fulfilment in other sectors of the economy and with many relocating overseas. Training budgets gradually evaporated and episodic corruption that had been a coping mechanism became a systemwide normal.

“All in all, public interest, merit principles and competency-based HRM got emasculated, with the gatekeeping responsibility of the FCSC wantonly weakened and politicized especially through nepotism, as appointments into the career public service came to be seen as largesse for patronage and rent-seeking in a dynamic that throws merit to the dogs.

Noting that a productivity audit and economic diversification are imperative, Olaopa said that this would free and realign resources.

“Beyond that, however, the ultimate breakthrough for Nigeria will be economic diversification and associated governance reforms to enable a more enabling and productive federalism that creates the right investment climate to build the private sector into the veritable engine of growth for the national economy.

“Of course, human capital development, social security and the constitutional order and rule of law must go hand in hand to create the enabling environment for growth”, he said.

Highlighting industrial harmony and developmental industrial relations as a critical success factor , Olaopa said that “we are at a juncture where the tripartite social partners need a strategic partnership that promotes industrial harmony and enables the government to dismantle some of the binding constraints that have hampered problem-solving, policy implementation impact and real inclusive development in Nigeria.

“Such no-holds-barred dialogue of the tripartite partners must address the conundrum of a federal bureaucratic workforce wherein ‘too many people do nothing, too many do too little, and too few do too much’ as a condition precedent to instituting a new competency-based human resource management in the Federal civil service.

“Labour unions will be doing the nation a great patriotic service if they partner with the government to dethrone the pervasive culture of waste and corruption. It is in support of this that we are also promoting a President-led national productivity movement and a sound national waste reduction strategy that includes a new asset and facility maintenance culture.”he said.

Earlier, according to Olaopa, President Bola Tinubu’s expectation is ‘that the new FCSC leadership will competently facilitate the transformation, reorientation, and digitization of the federal bureaucracy to enable, and not stifle, growth and enhanced private sector participation in the development of the Nigerian economy, in full adherence to the Renewed Hope Agenda of (this) administration.’

“In interpreting the loaded charge, we did not take it as a sole task assigned to the commission. Instead, we see the commission’s mission as working closely together with key partners across the frontlines of public service reform”, Olaopa said.

“That is why we have been in robust dialogue with the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation and the Office of the Special Adviser on Policy and Coordination on how we could redouble our joint efforts to reposition the Federal bureaucracy and make it a more capable, professional, technology-enabled and accountable engine room policy and programme implementation backend in the delivery of the Renewed Hope Agenda of the FGN.

“We consider the Office of Secretary to the Government of the Federation as the nodal point for the overall coordination of the entire Federal Government’s development process especially in connecting our reforms to the entire public sector within a whole of government approach which is best practice. It is just as well that the current SGF is an accomplished public servant with a storied career in the civil service and a similarly distinguished career in politics as a two-term governor, three-time senator, a senate leader and most recently as a minister. We were very encouraged when we shared the substance of our FCSC reform plan with him and he has graciously accepted to be our Chief Promoter”, he said.

Olaopa added: “We fully appreciate the enormous creative work that the current and past Heads of Service of the Federation have made in this reform journey. We especially appreciate the irreducible Federal Service Strategy and Implementation Plan (2021-2025) being assiduously implemented by Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan, the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation. We therefore chose to enter into strategic partnership with her office.

“Similarly, we consider the Federal Government’s resolve to adopt the performance management approach through the signing of performance bonds with Ministers, permanent secretaries and CEOs of agencies as a game changer. The Office of the President by the Special Adviser (Policy and Coordination) is driving this innovative process, and we have chosen to align our reform strategy to capacitate MDAs to deliver on the performance bond that they signed.

“Our theory of change is a very simple one, to wit, that the rate of social progress Nigeria would ever achieve depends on the degree to which political power is matched with policy, strategic and managerial intelligence. Consequently, public officials operating at the core of the policy process must necessarily be determined not just by seniority but through a talent management dynamic that puts greater weight on authority of knowledge and professional expertise.

“We do not however want you to be in the dark regarding the basic issues underlying these reforms as we go forward. Let me outline seven of these issues so that we all have a shared understanding of what we are grappling with. “