Opinion

Tunji Olaopa’s Vision Of Nigeria As A Nation

Published

2 years ago

April 2, 2023

NewTimes

Prof.Megbolugbe

By Isaac Megbolugbe

“Nigeria has refused to leverage her endowment to step into national unity and greatness.” Professor Tunji Olaopa

“The project of nation-building and development which Nigerians espouse is a journey without maps, undertaken in moral anarchy towards an uncertain destination.” Professor Claude Ake

“The Nigeria project is a simple one: there is a need to achieve national integration through a sustained effort to translate Nigeria’s ethnic capital into a framework of civic nationalism that brings everyone into a clear vision of what Nigeria is and what it could be.” Professor Tunji Olaopa

Professor Tunji Olaopa declared in the concluding chapter of his fabulous memoir, The Unending Quest for Reform, that Nigeria has failed to become a nation as at 2022. Will 2023 be the turnaround year that we have longed for? A lot depends on what and how the tremendous political power in the hands of the incoming administration is used. Will the president-elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, inhabit the spirit of the late Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore who chose to make his country arise and join the constellation of first-world nations instead of putting his family on the Forbes list of the richest people in the world? Will he play for glory and an immortal legacy and be the historical leader who finally got it right for Nigeria? Olaopa offers him a tremendous gift in the form of his recent memoir. Professor Olaopa asked for a reset and return to the fundamentals. The foundations of every country that has joined the world of developed nations in the last and this century seem uniform; they all started with the establishment of a developmental state which then served as the platform leveraged to build the architecture of a nation-state. I agree with him. It is doable. It should work. Olaopa’s corollary to a capable developmental state is a functional and efficient public service. Here, he is superbly prepared to help the country realise this capability.

Going back to the fundamentals is akin to the post-independence expectations of Africans, including Nigerians, from their anticolonial nationalists. Olaopa captures this succinctly in his memoir:

It was the hope that independence would be accompanied by the emergence of a capable developmental state that could deliver the strategic framework to (a) implement sound macroeconomic policies that could alleviate poverty, create employment, and grow a strong, sustainable and competitive economy that could facilitate the well-being of the citizens; (b) promote popular participation that can lead to the indigenous ownership of the development agenda; (c) build a sound institution of public administration that is professional, citizen-friendly, technology-enabled and meritocratic with a ready capability to efficiently achieve service delivery; and (d) mobilise state resources, administer budgets and manage public finances productively, transparently and accountably.

Olaopa’s vision of a functional and efficient public service involves the founding of a civil service system that is well-informed by the prompting of a comprehensive and coherent reform agenda. This reform agenda is impressively explained, justified, and described in professionally-laden terms in the memoir. He molded himself in the image of the late Professor Ojetunji Aboyade both in essence. Aboyade was the master and Olaopa was the apprentice. Abayode modernised Nigeria’s policy architecture and produced a master national development plan in the form of The Second National Development Plan (1970-1974). Olaopa wants to do a similar thing for Nigeria’s civil service system and thereby modernise the national development and governance management architecture which will complement Aboyade’s template for policy and planning for national development. Olaopa has also attained impeccable professional maturation and he is poised to lead his country into joining the rank of world-class public administration systems.

Isn’t Olaopa amazing? He was initiated into Nigeria’s public service as a knowledge-driven bureaucrat. He became an expert-insider and later mastered the Aboyade scholar-practitioner model which embodies a distinct relationship between the personal and the professional. In a way, Olaopa’s memoir narrates the bricolage of his life, both personal and professional, that is marked by his unifying identity and commitment to the scholar-practitioner praxis of public administration. I believe that Professor Olaopa is a gift and a blessing for the country, a once in a generation talent that providence has superbly prepared for a time like this. It is ironic that a nation that holds a large assembly of such exceptional visionaries has undergone the immense rascality and depravity that postcolonial Nigeria has experienced in the area of public governance. Olaopa is not under any grand illusion. He worries about the reality facing the country and considers the challenges before her to be much more daunting and complicated. While his vision for the country is clear to him, he does find the journey confusing. Given the professional competence of his generation, the task of crafting a value proposition for the immediate transformation of Nigeria into a developmental state should not be too daunting to accomplish.

Before outlining a portfolio of initiatives capable of constituting a transformative programme that could surely and quickly produce a developmental state for the country which the president-elect touched on during the recent presidential campaign, let us review how Olaopa discusses how we got here. One more thing. Olaopa is concerned that the debate among political elites concerning the future of the country has degenerated into choosing between restructuring and self-determination. The risk of Nigeria breaking up is no longer theoretical but a practical possibility. In the private sector, when a company is failing or has failed, the board of directors typically press the emergency button and bring in a turnaround team. This turnaround team puts the company on a sure footing, offer it up for sale or seek a merger. Similarly, the incoming administration needs two teams. First, a turnaround team that can focus on redirecting the nation and putting her on a sure footing as a developmental state is needed. The second is a governance team to attend to the business of governing the country and ensuring the well-being of citizens. Both teams report to the president-elect, each with its own focused agenda. In essence, the administration must turnaround the economy and clarify the essence of this country as a state to regain broad-based credibility and a mandate to resolve the Nigerian factor that has bedevilled the performance of the country for so long. With such a mandate, the administration will be well-positioned to transform the developmental state into a nation-state and put her on the road toward greatness among the league of first-world nations.

Back to Olaopa’s journey, Olaopa locates himself at the forefront of the narration about how Nigeria has struggled to emerge as a capable developmental state. He believes that providence had placed him at the epicenter of public governance in the Nigerian state. Professor Adeshina Afolayan, Head, Department of Philosophy, University of Ibadan, agrees with this position. In his commentary on Olaopa’s memoir, he observed that Olaopa’s self and the nation have indeed merged in a struggle for realisation. Olaopa’s quest for deep-rooted reform crystallised in 1992 when providence and reality fused to land him at the center of political gravity and seat of government in Nigeria. He was already prepared because of his research and the reform tasks that he had set for himself. His sense of mission is captured in the following statement in his memoir:

The new republic, to use my platonic metaphor, could only be rehabilitated and reconstructed right from within the center of the old one. I told myself, right from the beginning, that I had to walk as circumspectly as I could manage and that was not only in terms of knowing my way around the city alone but also knowing my way through the corridors of power. Abuja then became, for me, a metaphor for so many things, positive and negative. It became the very center of my reflections about Nigeria and what could go right for her.

Prof. Tunji Olaopa

Next, Olaopa was transported from the center of gravity when he was summoned by The Presidency during General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida’s administration to be right within the vortex of governance and government in Abuja. This was when Olaopa realised that the speechwriting skills he had could serve to facilitate strategic communication between the government and the governed. More importantly, he learned how speechwriting could be used as a tool for policy management and enhancement of leadership in public governance. It was at The Presidency that God’s favour located Olaopa through the intervention of his age-long mentor, Professor Ojetunji Aboyade, who was, at the time, the Chairman of the highly powerful and hugely influential Presidential Advisory Committee (PAC) and who promptly requested Olaopa’s redeployment to PAC.

Olaopa’s quest for the reform of Nigeria’s government got a substantial boost when he was posted to the Personnel Management Department of the General Services Office in the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation. This was where he served as the desk officer for the implementation of the 1995 White Paper Panel on Public Service Reform which was headed by Allison Ayida. Olaopa became the secretary of the White Paper Panel on Public Service Reform and he was also able to build his absorptive capacity to formulate a deep understanding of the public service that later enabled his doctoral research. Olaopa’s doctoral research reminded him of what he had perceived earlier in the course of writing the biography of Professor Ojetunji Aboyade. Substantial and deep understanding of policy and implementation comes from an integrated interrogation of both theory and practice. The complexity and difficulty of discerning the content and context of Nigeria’s civil service system demand a comprehensive, robust, and coherent understanding of the issues, concerns, workings and challenges of the civil service system in Nigeria.

As an aspiring reformer, he realised the need to build up his administrative management acumen so that his ideas and proposals could accurately correspond to the reality of the Nigerian situation. A coherent and robust rejuvenation of the civil service system in Nigeria demands nothing less. Olaopa had numerous opportunities, both within and outside Nigeria’s civil service system, to accomplish his mission of personal and intellectual understanding about how the public service worked and how it could be redeemed from the weight of its own debilities. His memoir presents, in extensive details, elegant prose and beautiful poetry, cogent pontifications on his extensive experiences and insights.

In conclusion, Olaopa’s doctoral research into the public service system and his practical experience of its inner workings have prepared him intellectually and professionally. He got validation of his ambition and mission to reform Nigeria’s civil service system from both the late Professor Emeritus Akin Mabogunje and President Olusegun Obasanjo. President Obasanjo actually gave him an order in one instance as follows: “Go there and give the required technical support to get the best institutional reform strategy for the country. Good day”. Also, the head of the civil service of the federation approved the establishment of the Bureau of Public Service Reform (BPSR) that was proposed by Oloapa. The BPSR was tasked with the responsibility of coordinating and reporting on ongoing reforms and their implementation. It was designed to be an engine room institutionally positioned to foster the required linkages with concurrent reforms. The BPSR was in the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation for overall strategic oversights.

On the task of building a developmental state, Olaopa’s vision of what he called the Nigerian national project in his memoir has the stated purpose of integrating Nigerians into one integral whole and facilitating their well-being. This project is at three levels: a vibrant economy, a world class civil service system and a vigorously dynamic civil society. In his memoir, Olaopa outlines the three components of the Nigeria Project as follows:

the material/infrastructural level which include the system of production, distribution, consumption and exchange;
the institutional dimension involving the system of institutions, organisations and procedural mechanisms underlying democracy; and
the social relations, cultures, values, beliefs and attitudinal orientations of the people.

We here briefly outline a program of initiatives that can address the first component for the realisation of the country as a developmental state. This is the foundational platform for any authentic nation-building, a sort of Promised Land. This will imply that the country has indeed crossed the metaphorical Jordan River. Nigeria left Egypt in 1960 but has been wandering in the wilderness since then. From 1960 to the present-day Nigeria, various military regimes and civilian administrations established and implemented their own economic development policies to mixed degrees of success and failure. With each regime came a new programme or initiative to transform the national economy. It was not until the Obasanjo administration, beginning in 1999, that the first effective framework to manage the economy took effect. Known as the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategies (NEEDS), it incorporated value-based governance and institutional reforms as crucial part of the process for achieving wealth creation, employment generation and poverty reduction. Before the President Buhari’s Administration, the importance and wide acceptance of NEEDS was evidenced in its use by the subsequent administrations within their own policy and programme reforms for managing the economy.

Unfortunately, the desired outcomes for the national economy have not been fully achieved. We summarise the drivers behind these missed expectations using the acronym, ‘13 cs’, below (the first 3 were from the Goodluck Jonathan administration):

As asserted by President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, “Nigeria’s development efforts have, over the years, been characterised by lack of continuity, consistency and commitment.”
Concentration: There has been a lack of concentration of efforts over time, place and people to achieve the critical mass needed to transform the economy and impact a group of people.
Coordination: Lack of coordination across policies, people and places to achieve a targeted objective or objects of development also accounts for policy failure.
Collaboration: There has also been a lack of collaboration among the relevant stakeholders within a community of development.
Community: There is also a lack of specific focus on places or regions as objects of economic development, not welfare.
Comprehensiveness: There is a dearth of comprehensive policies, programmes and projects to accomplish the holistic task of developmental transformation. Too much emphasis is placed on partial lists of problems, with the set of problems to be solved changing from administration to administration. All aspects of a problem must be addressed until development takes place.
Cooperation: A lack of cooperation among stakeholders such as the government, private sector, civil society and communities is also present.
Convergence: Lack of a pathway toward the convergence of efforts and processes in the total development of places or their economies also distracts from development. Policies must be in place to ensure that development is considered and addressed across all sectors of the socio-economic environment.
Concurrency: There is no dedicated orchestration of policies, programmes and projects based on a structured understanding of what it takes to unleash development on the different targets of development.
Consolidation: Mechanisms to achieve consolidation and prevent leakages of development’s benefits are not put in place. Consolidation is essential for the accumulation and agglomeration of efforts to induce development.
Capitalization: There is a lack of socially constructed markets to ensure the capitalisation of development efforts into different categories of wealth such as community, market and financial capital.

We propose a bifurcated approach, one for the long-term and one for the short-term. The short-term is for the duration of the first term of the incoming administration. The long-term is for the governance team to figure out. We expect that there will be a convergence once the developmental state is established and a mandate is secured from the Nigerian people. Meanwhile, the turnaround team should be tasked with simultaneously formulating and implementing four initiatives that constitute a portfolio of development projects in the service of Nigeria’s transformation into a developmental state. Two will be designed to connect Nigeria to the global economy as a participant and contributor, not only as a consumer. One will be anchored by an economic base of financial services, innovation and technology. It will transform Lagos into a global city and the financial hub of Africa directly connected to a network of global financial centers including Wall Street, London, Tokyo and Singapore. The other will be to accelerate and enhance the Calabar Deep Seaport, otherwise referred to as the Bakassi Deep Seaport. This is to be built in Idua-Inwang village in the Esighi community of Bakassi Local Government Area of Cross River State downstream of the existing Calabar seaport. It would be the deepest seaport in Africa upon completion. It will have a 16-meter draft and a key wall of 680 meters that would allow all sizes of vessels to berth. The project is still in the pre-project implementation stage so the opportunity still exists to enhance the project and make the proposed seaport the port city capital of Africa capable of serving the whole of Africa and the Middle East. The biggest ships will be able to come from Europe and Asia to berth so that lighter ships can come from different parts of Africa to serve Africa and the Middle East.

The other two projects will anchor regional economies. The first is to bring back the Lake Chad Basin as a vibrant regional economic footprint. Lake Chad of today is a shadow of and a far cry from its magnificent origin and size at its apogee about 7000 years ago. The Chad Basin with the Lake Chad, as we know it today, as its focal point, extends over the area covered by its primordial inland sea and beyond and is estimated to be about 2,434,000 square kilometers. Lake Chad is a freshwater inland lake, a large oasis in a part of Africa’s northern semi-arid Sahel zone. It is well-endowed with huge reserves of groundwater, crude oil and gas, and mineral resources, including salt, gold, uranium, titanium, and bauxite. Nigeria can provide the innovative leadership, under the auspices of the Lake Chad Basin Commission, to recharge the basin with a transfer of water from the Congo River basin, via a 2400-kilometer long canal. Obviously, there are major political, economic, financial and technical challenges, and the political will and executive capacity to execute such a huge project are also possible obstacles. But that is the kind of project management capability that a turnaround team can deliver in the service of the president-elect to project courage and leadership capability toward the transformation of the Lake Chad Basin into a vibrant regional economy covering many of the countries that are members of the Lake Chad Basin Commission and even those that are not.

The second is to choose a state to serve as a prototype of how to develop a regional anchor economy. The late Professor Mabogunje once illustrated the need for every region or state within the country to build her own economic base on its own resource endowments or ingenuity. He compared the State of Texas to the State of Nevada. Texas has oil resources. Neveda is in the desert but chose to build her economy on entertainment and gambling. Both states are flourishing based on their different economic base. In the 21st century, every state should be able to build an anchor regional economy. Nevertheless, first things must be considered first. The state must establish a robust social overhead capital through the development of natural resources, the capacity for processing resources, manufacturing of products and optimal service delivery. Then, it must seek the application of knowledge across sectors and evolve into a knowledge economy. This way, such a state will be able to transform her local economic base into an anchor regional economy. An anchor regional economy can be compared to a rocket economy. It is a regional economy that is operated in the orbit of economically advanced regions in both national and continental contexts.

Using Ondo State for illustration, one sees a state which local economic development practices tend to follow standard protocols for regional economic development. There has been limited creativity and opportunity for value creation. What Ondo State seems to have done to date is seek economic growth through investment promotion that will create jobs. Consistent with other economies that receive large revenues from national resource endowments, there has been less emphasis placed on expanding the local tax base as incoming investors are provided with all kinds of tax incentives. The state seems to have been partially behaving like the industrial developers of the US South during the 1950s and 1960s whose main preoccupation was to sell the locality and its industrial sites to prospective investors seeking locations for manufacturing facilities. The developers use various analytical tools and techniques not so much to understand the economic base but to advertise, market and sell locations to industrial prospects. The developer focuses on promotion and recruitment efforts in lieu of the long-term economic development picture. Modern economic development practices encourage a macro-strategic view of the regional economy in all development actions. It requires comprehensive analysis and creative problem-solving skills in conjunction with marketing and salesmanship efforts. The turnaround team, under the direction of the president–elect and led by a master economic developer, can study Ondo State as a prototype and develop a tailored methodology to be employed as a guide for the practice of economic development at the national level and in other states of the federation. Master economic developers have concerns for the entire economy, not just for the agricultural, mining, manufacturing or healthcare sectors. This implies that the master economic developer must be equipped with state-of-the-art analytical skills as well as access to modern and creative problem-solving capability to be able to create a programme of investment opportunities that could be communicated in a manner that will attract global capital into the locality.

To transform Nigeria into a developmental state, I have briefly outlined a few strategies in which the incoming administration must invest its political capital. The size and scope of the proposed project portfolio are necessary to yield the kind and scope of development dividends that would make a difference. From what many said were impossible, possibilities that have attained the height of confounding and breathtaking successes have emerged. What we have witnessed to date is a parade of troubled and failed ventures at attaining national development. I know that the late Professor Claude Ake once affirmed that “The project of nation building and development which Nigerians espouse is a journey without maps, undertaken in moral anarchy towards an uncertain destination.” Olaopa, in his wonderful memoir, has offered the nation a map and a compass. The incoming administration must not present itself as a politically diffident team. It must rather have courage and display a high level of dexterity in its deployment of political power and the strategic utilisation of talents and human capital. May God grant the wisdom required to turn the country around to the president-elect. Amen.

. Megbolugbe is a former practice leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers. He is also a retired professor at the Carey Business School, Johns Hopkins University, and a fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. He resides in the United States of America.

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Opinion

Professor Femi Badejo At 70: The Advocacy Of Equity

Published

4 days ago

March 7, 2025

NewTimes

Dele Jegede In Conversation With Prince Yemisi Shyllon

Prof. Toyin Falola

By Toyin Falola

People who are well-grounded in understanding the operations of the universe would quickly tell anyone who cares to listen that life is about words, signs, and symbols. Individuals in this category do not suddenly come to that knowledge midway through their life’s journey but through experiences, exposure, and study.

Regardless of their cultural identity or ideological mindset, everyone would accept that many things that happen in life are circumscribed by universal signs and symbols, which ordinary or inexperienced people may not easily understand. For example, where people are born and the environment where they grow up are vital signs that sometimes determine the trajectory of their life journey.

These things constitute what should be called signs because where we are born, and the environment where we grow up is crucial in shaping a few things in our lives, especially how we see the world or how we socialize in it, leading to the manner of which we negotiate the unfurling activities. More importantly, one’s lifelong destiny is often shaped by confident choices that humans make, especially the choice of what career path to follow or one’s ambition concerning one’s intellectual evolution. Professor Badejo’s signs and symbols of greatness are easily unmasked by his life’s series of activities, especially his career choices. Anyone expert in political science and law should excel in what they do, except if they do not have enough discipline to see themselves through.

The world has long cultivated the habit of celebrating individuals with outstanding contributions to the human world, and it is no coincidence that Professor Badejo falls into this category. The signs have always been there that an individual of his intellectual strength and persuasion cannot but contribute significantly to the straightening of things in a chaotic world, particularly in their conviction that as the world operates today, issues and activities are not orderly or in a right direction to guarantee collective advancement.

It cannot be overemphasized that every moment in human history is always dotted with a fair share of critical problems that often demand outstanding individuals’ precocious ideas and creative ingenuity. Professor Badejo is a shining example of the quest to make the world a better place. His foundation in the legal profession is deliberate, for he understands early enough that people who would dare the devil in today’s global society must understand the operations of their activities and predict human steps. This way, they can make timely decisions that would change the tides of things for the good of everyone. As already implied, the world always faces a fair share of its challenges because there are individuals who are blessed to solve issues using their intellectual strength. As a professor and a professional in legal affairs, Badejo is very grounded in dissecting international issues so that people can have a proper overview of the interplays of power and contestation in the global community. In other words, if you intend to take advantage of the vulnerable systems of the world, people like Badejo would be there, reminding you of the atrocities sparked by the parochialism of your ambitions.

It is exciting to discover that Badejo has profound knowledge of political science, which places him in good condition to understand political figures’ operations, intentions, and inclinations toward whatever actions they embark on. It, therefore, makes it more rewarding for him to use his intellect to redefine public relations through political insights so that the human world will attain progress and sustain the one they have already accomplished. That Badejo has worked in different places, especially in international locations, using his educational insights and professional skills to improve the conditions of the world speaks highly of his dedication to making an indelible impact.

I cannot state enough how vital Badejo has been. As indicated, the signs that he would make such accomplishments exemplify his career choices. While we cannot deny his commitment to such ambitions, we cannot understate how he has dedicated himself to getting the best from his knowledge. We, therefore, cannot undervalue his dedication to academic engagements, as that forms the basis of his intellectual advancement today―one which continues to brighten his life in tremendous ways. At the international level, he has served in different capacities; the summary is that he was either contracted to use his wealth of experience to save the day or use his professional expertise to provoke a change.

His efforts in community development services, especially in his involvement with the international community or non-governmental organizations, have always demanded his intellectual support. This cannot even overshadow his contributions to building the world’s human capital. It is interesting to state that Professor Badejo is a teacher who has made substantial contributions to knowledge generally. Apart from being a seasoned researcher, he has always been dominant in teaching, producing a sizeable fraction of students who underwent tutelage under him. This explains why many people can attest to how profoundly this scholar has redefined how they see the world and the things in life. Teachers hold a good place in our collective lives because they sacrifice very much to mold people’s minds correctly.

Badejo belongs to the class of educators who make incredibly critical efforts to improve Africa. He has painstakingly conducted research to study different issues, especially in areas of political science and, by extension, the legal profession. His success is significant, and he is enthusiastic in his endeavors. I should inform you that although the activity of teaching is conventionally seen as restricted to the four walls of an institution, it, however, transcends such conceptual location; teaching is what we do when we enlighten groups of people, communities of learners, and class of individuals to impact them or provoke them to change socially.

It gets more enjoyable when you know that Badejo has made an invaluable impression on us all with his solid academic publications, from which many of us today learn. In 2024, Badejo published an exemplary work titled Nigeria Corruption Perception Data. Apart from the fact that this work produces an objective overview of how the country is perceived by its citizens and the world generally, it is also an indictment of the political class about how they manage the systems and institutions in the country, thereby affecting Nigeria’s political and economic destiny in some ways. One who knows Badejo knows that such academic engagements increase his adrenaline because it will use his intellectual expertise in that domain and allow him to present his thoughts or ideas to the people. He has consistently revealed to the world the undergarments of Nigeria’s political systems, especially how it has become vulnerable in the hands of the few who control it. In what manner and character does one explain the problems of unbridled leadership compared to how neocolonial Nigerian leaders have particularly (mis)managed the country’s available resources, demonstrating their myopic imagination about the future? Issues like this are always given the necessary attention, and it explains how Badejo addresses fundamental issues, not the periphery.

Perhaps because of his intellectual depth, he has consistently produced respectable works on African democracy, using the Nigerian situation as his experiment laboratory. On many occasions, he has suggested to the political elites that they should make conscious efforts towards transforming Nigeria’s democracy and save it from whatever problems it may face. He takes this position, knowing that it is the freedom highlighted by democracy that is fundamental to the creation of a functional society, which would produce the necessary atmosphere in which people can grow. He understands that although democracy may have internal failings and even complications that could be a threat, especially when mismanaged, it remains the only avenue through which divergent thinking can be amplified so that the best ideas and approaches can be born. Such an individual cannot but be celebrated and even appreciated for their invaluable contributions to the human world. They have paid their dues and thus would always be accorded royal treatment, for their voices remind us of what we should be as a collective and not what our impulses want us to be.

On May 15, 2025, I will offer an in-person tribute and a lecture in his honor.

Opinion

Natasha As Worthy Rebel

Published

4 days ago

March 6, 2025

NewTimes

Prof. Tony Afejuku

By Tony Afejuku

Elegant Natasha. Handsome Natasha. Beautiful Natasha. Nice Natasha. Sharp Natasha. Clever Natasha. Natasha the envy of men and women. Natasha of several qualities – above all, Natasha the rebel; Natasha a worthy rebel. Natasha a good patriot that is a worthy patriot. Everything the columnist has just stated or has just outlined or has just highlighted constitutes his interpretation of Senator (Barrister, Mrs.) Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan’s performance when she appeared before Arise News Good Morning Show on Friday, 28 February, 2025 to throw light on the drama that happened in the Senate a day or so before.

What was the drama on that day really about? What happened in the Senate between her and the Senate President was it really all about her seat re-allocation or re-assignment? Or, was it essentially about something else to entrap her – as she was allegedly told on the floor of the Senate on the afore-mentioned day of drama? The columnist saw everything as shown live on his television set that was privately power-generated (in this power-less or electricity-less clime) from the beginning to the end. The columnist wondered why, just why Natasha reacted the way she did, and why specifically she dared the Senate President the way she did. What was inevitably amiss? Why was/is Natasha claiming everybody’s attention the way she did (and she is still dong)? Why were her fellow senators, more than several of the male senators, I mean, flowing to her in her river of rebellion against the standards of the Senate that must be kept up? Was it because even if she was right in her classical democratic rebellion of a loner, it was necessary that the prestige of the great senators and that of their equally great but almighty President who is not more than first among equals should not be allowed to dwindle? And why was the Senate President so stupefied when Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan brandished Order 10 several times as she rebelliously but decorously stood her ground, grounds or no grounds? Did the Senate President at any time try to have a bite or a taste of Natasha’s inviting stupefacient something that had caused him the stupefaction I was allowed personally to notice by the inner master on that day that the rebellious one knocked him to stupor – or to a state of near-stupor before his like-minded senators came to his rescue? All these questions are significant ones (or must be significant ones) for all those who desire to find a factual and truthful solution to what is growing to be a pattern of values between the Senate President Godswill Akpabio and Senator (Mrs.) Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, the very wife of Mr. Godswill Akpabio’s good friend (or now erstwhile good friend?).

On Saturday, 29 February, 2025, that is, almost a week ago, I read entirely on pages 10-12 of Saturday Vanguard details of the Natasha Uduaghan-Godswill Akpabio problem and other proclamations, claims and counter-claims, including Natasha’s full interview she granted Arise News Good Morning Show which I had already alluded to. Natasha answered more than very satisfactorily all the questions put to her concerning the following: “allegations by a northern group”; “harassment of clerk and requests for CVs of staff”; “how the sitting arrangement issue started”; “denial of rights”; and “the night-cub incident.” My assertion(s) to each of her every answer is clearly clear and transparently transparent, and brings me to this conclusion: A highly brilliant and sharp female senator; a highly valuable, worthy, no nonsense female senator that Senator (Drs. Mrs.) Remi Tinubu, our President’s dear, dear wife, who is equally bright and brilliant, needs in her core team of patriots to help make our country reach its rightful destination. But I have no persuasive influence whatever upon her to make her see Natasha as I see her – or as I am seeing her. Yet I should tell her as the inner master tells me to say to her what I am now saying to her. Natasha certainly has her foibles – like all human-beings, including our one and only Godswill Akpabio. Her foibles, however, pale into nothing or insignificance in comparison with her positively rebellious bent and manner.
Since the matter between Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan and Senator Godswill Akpabio entered our television screens and newspapers and everywhere outside the main-stream media the Senate President has not deemed it right to claim our attention with at least one important line of defence from his own persuasive mouth. Why? Others, some of whom claim to be activists (activists my foot!) have been speaking for him. Why? If he does not want to say anything he should instruct his hangers-on, including his lawyer(s), his acolytes and cohorts and sycophants, and Natasha’s back-stabbers in the Senate, to keep mum until the brouhaha stills itself, evaporates and vanishes. But will it? I don’t think so until he transparently opens his line of persuasive rebuttal himself.

By the way, why did his wife, his damsel (who, like Natasha, is an impeccable communicator), come into the fray? What for? I saw her on television trying to persuade people like us in vain. After all said and done I exclaimed to myself “What for?” in the trope of a question. She said several things which I, as a literary detective and gleaner, punctured. I will only mention one or two here. (After all, I am not Natasha’s lawyer as I am not Unoma’s lawyer). She said, among other things, that no woman or women ever complained against her disciplined darling husband as a governor or minister – if I heard her well. I chuckled. No woman or women who succumbed to the sheets-whims-and-caprices of her darling governor- or minister- husband would complain openly or in loud silence to Unoma or to anyone for that matter close to Unoma. I put this to Unoma as a literary gleaner who is ever objective come rain or sunshine. Secondly, her open swipe at Natasha’s husband has drawn the very decent man who cannot hurt a fly out of his refined shell. I am sure that she and her disciplined husband have since seen and read the mature and refined letter of the highly cultured Alema of the very beautifully great Kingdom of Warri, the envy of many kingdom-less kingdoms, on what has been that shouldn’t have been.

There are other things I want to say but which I am nicely holding back as a top Niger Delta personage. What I can do best is to immerse myself in my own quiet way on how to bring this matter to a good and transparent end. The Senate President and the Alema of Warri must meet to resolve the knot in the favour of their friendship and that of the people of the whole of the Niger Delta and beyond. The situation needs to be remedied. I know how, but I won’t open my mouth wide here. For the time being, however, Natasha, our worthy rebel, needs to be appeased with appeasable appeasement by appeasers agreeable to the parties and all the parties in our Niger Delta and the Confluence State and beyond. I hope I am not building castles in Spain. Phew!

Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.

Opinion

IBB In The Annals Of Civil Service Reforms In Nigeria

Published

4 days ago

March 6, 2025

NewTimes

Prof. Tunji Olaopa

By Tunji Olaopa

The autobiography is a most delicate, complex and indeed disruptive art form. It is the autobiographer’s authorial insistence to be heard in terms of his or her narrative addition to a historical discourse. In fact, it is the autobiographer’s narration of the historical event from his or her own perspective. And more often than not, when the autobiographer is a fundamental participant in the event, the complexities of that event and the circumstances surrounding it are multiplied. Only very few autobiographies enjoy global approval. And that is because the art form is seen as an ego trip. That sentiment is summed up by the English biographer, Humphrey Carpenter: “Autobiography is probably the most respectable form of lying.” This is even made worse if the protagonists are critical individuals whose lives have affected national trajectories. General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) is one such critical protagonist, and his autobiography has arrived.

A Journey in Service has since started generating lots of furors in all strata of the Nigerian public space, online and offline. Lots of opinions have tied IBB to several significant historical moments in Nigeria, especially the annulment of the June 12 elections, and the demise of MKO Abiola. What many have conveniently glossed over, and a case I have consistently made, is that personal narrative in the forms of autobiography and memoirs serve a unique function in terms of their historical import. If A Journey in Service had not been written, we will all be gasping within the yawning silence of the political and administrative gaps that ought to have been filled with whatever the autobiographer has to say. But now it has been written, and we can then commence the journey of unraveling how the narrative fits or fails to fit in with the existing accounts of Nigeria’s political development.
This personal narrative has a critical import for me as a historian of Nigeria’s administrative and reform trajectories. The Babangida administration played a very fundamental role in articulating a significant portion of Nigeria’s administrative reform architecture. And so, that portion of the trajectory, and the entire institutional reform agenda of the Nigerian state, will not be complete without adding the voice and perspective of the key protagonist to the understanding of how the reform policy emerged. No matter what anyone thinks, the imperative of national history demands that such an account be added to the stock of what we already know, and to flesh out a better understanding of what we already know. The idea therefore is to see how the protagonist, no matter the groundswell of national opinion for or against him, fits into a larger picture of the political and administrative frameworks that enable us to see where the nation is coming from and where it is headed.

This is a task every institutional reformer must long for without getting sidetracked by sentimental opinion that accords blame and slings mud. This is part of what makes IBB and A Journey in Service such a delight for me. Unfortunately, the head of the historic administration does not consider that irreducible reform agenda that distinguishes his administration so significantly as to celebrate its conception, elements and operation, as well as its limitations, in a significant autobiography. That responsibility has been passed to posterity. This piece rescues that fundamental omission.

The pre-Babangida administrative reform narrative must always revert back to the 1974 Udoji Commission. That Commission is singular because it was the first to attempt an alignment between Nigeria’s reform efforts and the emerging managerial revolution in public administration across the globe. The Udoji Commission took its immediate inspiration from the Lord Fulton Committee of 1968 in Britain. The task of the Fulton Report was to inquire into the capability readiness of the British civil service to confront the modern British society and its technological complexity. Fulton’s most significant recommendation was the displacement of the cult of generalist amateur civil servants in an approaching administrative dispensation that requires a critical mass of new managers who possess the professionalism and specialist expertise to harness the talents needed to make the civil service economic, effective and efficient.
By the time the Udoji Commission was inaugurated, Nigeria had also reached the critical juncture where it became imperative to ask whether the Weberian assumptions underlying the British administrative legacy were capable of tackling the urgent governance requirement of a postcolonial society. The wage impasse which the system had been confronting before independence, for the Commission, was a symptom of a deeper administrative malady represented by a bureaucratic culture that had arrested innovation and entrepreneurial creativity in the analysis and implementation of policies. Managerialism therefore provides the most timely and perfect means of making the civil service system align with the goals of national development.

The Udoji Commission went on to leverage the global good practice of the time that calls for a new style of public service that deploys new management techniques of Planning, Programming and Budgeting System (PPBS), Management by Objectives (MBO), the precursor of what is today called the performance management system, project management system, among others, that were totally alien to the Nigerian public service, at the time. The new management architecture that the envisioned management system would have institutionalized would obviously have been inadequate but would have laid a critical substructure that would have set Nigeria on the new productivity paradigm that assisted Malaysia, Singapore, the Asian Tigers and many other developing countries that are within Nigerian global ranking at the time.

The most devastating blows that the civil service suffered were those created not by it but the governance tradition that militarism and “New Federalism” of the post-civil war years created where the rigorous analytical frame that governed development investment got replaced with the unreflective “with immediate effect” command and control governance tradition which created huge process, policy, capacity, performance and resource gaps. The Udoji Commission and its limitations, as well as the succeeding Phillips and Ayida Commissions, could be understood only within this military tradition of which IBB was a significant part. When he assumed office in 1985, one of the most immediate decisions was, according to his admission, the need to “strengthen the practice of the presidential system with clear economic, political, and social reforms to strengthen the nation as a constitutional democracy based on the presidential system.” Assuming the title of a “President” was therefore more than a mere nominal gesture to narcissism. Rather, he said, it was “a summation of our consensus on the need to preserve and strengthen the presidential system and make it work better for the nation.”

But a nominal title was not enough. A commitment to the presidential system, IBB insisted, defined the necessity of “structuring a reform programme around institutions to make it work.” And given the tension that already was prevalent in the heated polity, IBB surmised, the reforms that must make any significance must be as comprehensive as the administration could make it. And the first act of symbolic gesture was negative: the urgency of the need “to review the various draconian decrees, convictions, and pending cases that bordered on human rights violations.” The Exchange Control (anti-sabotage) Decree 7 and Decree 4 (Public Officers Protection Against False Accusation) had to be significantly reviewed. This was followed by the real positive task of reforming the economy and governance in ways that go beyond “knee-jerk populist reflexes.”

The task, in governance and economic terms, was therefore to “Remove the government from the role of an enormous money changer to that of an enabler of the appropriate economic environment. We also needed to let the economy, in general, breathe more freely.” It was to liberalize the economy and make government an able enabler rather than occupying the ‘commanding heights of the economy.”

Unfortunately for us all, IBB fails to dwell on what could have been a defining dimension of A Journey in Service, the civil service reform framework of the Babangida administration. This is shocking but revealing in itself. One possible reason is that the author subsumed the civil service reform under the broader political reforms: “Our political programme targeted the critical areas of political and socio-cultural restructuring highlighted by the Political Bureau report: the party system, the electoral process, including election administration, the federal structure, the civil service, and the problem of succession, including political leadership.”

And yet, this fails to do justice to the significance of the Babangida administration and its inheritance of the Dotun Philips Commission from the Buhari-Idiagbon administration. The Phillips Study Team is significant because it had the task of re-organizing the operations of the civil service in terms of professionalism that will eventually align it with the managerial revolution recommended by Udoji. And that reform effort alone cements his administration’s significance in the annals of administrative history in Nigeria, and a fundamental contribution to the cumulation of reform knowledge in Nigeria. IBB already gave the significant intellectual basis of the restructuring that was an imperative: to achieve “national rebirth and future greatness,” there is a need for political and economic restructuring that frees up the national space for transformation. And one way to do this, according to him, was cultivate intellectuals: “We needed the input of intellectuals to enlighten the business of government.” There was also the crucial need for the public service as the engine of government business. It beats me how IBB did not see that.

The Dotun Philips Study Group was constituted by the Buhari-Idiagbon administration in 1985, with the objective of undertaking an interrogation of the structure, mode of operation and strategy of the civil service in the light of contemporary administrative situation, as well as finding means by which the eroded professionalism of the system could be restored. After the 1985 coup, Babangida inherited the study group and transformed it into a full-blown commission whose task was to keep up with the objective of aligning the spirit of managerialism and a professionalized civil service with the form and spirit of presidentialism. This was to be incorporated into the total package of the Civil Service Reforms through a Civil Service Reorganisation Decree No. 43 of 1988. Given the administration’s concern with the rigid Soviet-styled centralization of the economy and the need to open the economy up to market forces, it was only logical that the administration would adopt the critical managerial principle of letting managers manage by having greater control on critical resources. This possesses the capacity to inspire a wholesale decentralization of the HRM function to MDA. The policy choice here is between centralized resource governance for example where the civil service commission wields constitutional powers for recruitment, promotion and discipline exercised at top management levels by the Commission while delegating the powers to MDAs at middle to lower levels.

The Philips reform was compromised essentially because (a) it took the issues involved in professionalism too far (for instance, by attempting to make a professional out of everybody within the civil service); and (b) its own unique managerial thrust was directed towards integrating the civil service into the presidential system of government, with one unintended consequence being that professionalization turned into politicization through an attempt, for instance, that turned an administrative post (permanent secretary) into a political one (director-general). And yet, this is not a failure because it was a logical reform complement to the short-circuited Udoji Commission recommendation of a public service founded on performance management, and its underlying managerial philosophy was significant in getting the Babangida administration its governance template for transforming national development.

I insist that an administration is only as good as its reform agenda, both in design and implementation. The Babangida administration gave Nigeria’s reform trajectory one of the key moments in the protracted attempt to translate the gains and efficiencies of a managerial opportunity to a bureaucratic system.

. Olaopa is a Professor of Public Administration and Chairman,
Federal Civil Service Commission .