The new Chairman of the Federal  Civil Service Commission, Prof.Tunji Olaopa has unveiled a set of strategies he would deploy to reform the service and make it a preferred employer of human capital in the country.

Olaopa, a professor of public administration, spoke in Abuja on Wednesday  during his inauguration along with 11 Commissioners by President Bola Tinubu.

The former permanent secretary who expressed appreciation to Tinubu for the confidence reposed in him and other members of the new commission assured the president that he would reform the federal service so that it would effectively contribute to good governance and the Renewed Hope Agenda of the government.

Noting that he is fully aware of the mandate of the new commission, Olaopa told the president: “We are fully aware that this is not just another mere appointment. You have unambiguously communicated your vision and expectations to us and I quote: ‘The President anticipates 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 his administration.’ 

Olaopa  said further : “Let me say, on behalf of myself and colleagues, that we hear our President and Leader loud and clear, and understand you fully. From across the various strata of the Nigerian society, everyone agrees that this set of appointments is a concession, once again, to the significance of professionalism, administrative expertise and technocratic knowledge. You have given us the highest opportunity to demonstrate what I have often considered the Nehemiah challenge – a patriotic call to build the broken walls of our country’s public institutions with the full realization that there will be obstacles along the way and that we will be called to render account not just to you, Sir, but, ultimately, to the Almighty. “

Olaopa who acknowledged that  these are trying times for Nigeria and Nigerians , however, drew hope from the president’s assurance on the day of his own inauguration when he said that these are the times for which leaders are well equipped to lead.

As Olaopa said:  “We are fully aware of what you require of us, Sir, and are also fully apprised of what Nigerians are yearning for. 

“It is most certainly not the presentation of another beautiful strategy or blueprint or to elaborate another set of plans for public service institutional reform. We have so many of those already. Rather, I know Mr. President expects us to galvanize the reform process and move it from visioneering, ideation, strategy and implementation planning to getting things done, by helping to deliver on the President’s governance promises. 

“We can perceive that Your Excellency, our President, considers that a major element in the inherited governance failures that Nigerians are grappling with is the dysfunction of the civil service. A dysfunctional civil service is an undependable machinery of government. Worse than that, it undermines development and service delivery efforts at all levels of government and creates a disabling environment for business and growth. But a well-functioning civil service is a boon to any nation that aspires to development. It is not a coincidence most of the countries that have made breakthrough progress in their development over the last several decades, including China, Chile, India, Singapore and Rwanda have one thing in common: a merit-based, competent and dependable civil service, which is at the core of policy design and implementation, shaping the decisions on what is to be done and how resources are allocated and accounted for, ensuring that there is efficiency, effectiveness, integrity and responsiveness in the delivery of public goods and services and creating an enabling environment for business and economic development.  Their civil services are the human capital edge that, together with committed and dynamic political leadership, have driven their quest for development. “

But by contrast,  according to Olaopa, “Nigeria’s civil service is in urgent need of a reset. But even before then we need to first arrest and reverse the prolonged trend of decline that has changed the status and perception of the service from that of a repository of human capital to an entity that Nigerians and services only interface with when they cannot help it – and only engage with at their own risk. The case for change is compelling, critical and urgent.” 

Taking cognisance of past efforts to develop the civil service for optimal performance, Olaopa highlighted  “frequent and spirited attempts to ignite the required institutional reform of a system whose efficiency, effectiveness and productivity are so critical to national transformation. Yet everything seems to keep on disappearing into the rabbit hole of hopelessness. Unfortunately, the Nigerian civil service has over the years been a victim of the politics that the leadership plays with the destiny of the nation, and the ‘Nigerian factor’, or the collusion of all of us in undermining the capacities of our systems to become efficient.”

While noting that the challenges facing the civil service are not insurmountable, Olaopa assured President Tinubu 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. This is how I see it, Mr. President: If the public service is the single largest employer, and given the present unsustainable cost of governance, then Nigerians have the right to demand from us that the public service account for tangible returns on the huge investments in it before it can justifiably demand  enhanced conditions of service.

“And what are we saying? An average diligent civil servant (and they are many), resumes work early. Hardly gets a space to rest during working hours. And closes late and exhausted. For that reason, bureaucrats believe that the civil service is working. But the literature and public perception see it differently. The sense is that public institutions are not working. Indeed, if private schools are preferred to public education, vigilantes and neighborhood watch are more trusted than statutory security agencies, electricity distribution companies’ supplies are mere backups to power generated privately, ministers prefer outside experts to long-serving civil servants, who will contest with the general cynical perception of the public and the media?”

“The issue here speaks to the difference between being busy and being productive by creating value, and, Mr. President, this dysfunction is not the fault of the civil servants-victims. 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.   

“Unfortunately, the Commission has itself gained the bad reputation of being a cash-and-carry organization, despite the immense and overwhelming efforts of past Chairmen and Commissioners, especially the spirited efforts of our highly-regarded Dr. Tukur Bello Ingawa, the out-going Chairman. The Commission must, therefore be upheld to the reform imperative of rebranding through urgent and spirited efforts to houseclean, so it could become the face of the civil service integrity and public-spiritedness.

“We must rejig the operational model which the Commission utilizes in its work, by enlisting or recruiting carefully selected, certified, and reform-minded professional HR experts who will take over the Commission secretariat and reconceptualize its operational guidelines and dynamics, drawing on modern technology to streamline, standardize, routinise and automate processes and minimize the opportunities for capricious human manipulation.”

Olaopa  told the president some other urgent steps that the optimisation of the federal civil service would necessitate. He said:  ” Mr. President, there is a lot that needs to be done to make the leap from a civil service that is seen largely as a liability to a service that is Nigeria’s cherished mainstay of human capital. Indeed, we have no option but to pursue long overdue reforms across all the core functions of the Commission, namely, recruitment, promotion and discipline. 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 integrates individual and corporate performance and encourages feedback from service users and citizens. We will also ensure that the disciplinary process is remodeled within the framework of stringent culture-change that operationalizes a new culture of work that maps 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 stakeholders driven.”