But while these nations were being transformed, Nigeria in the last 15 years was being destroyed by a group of money and material thirsty criminals who not only plundered its wealth but also destroyed the institutional fabrics required for nation’s development. About a 90 percent of those who governed Nigeria at various levels in the last 16 years under the PDP acted like vampires. If you seat to think of what they did to Nigeria, you will surely cry.
Rather than build, they destroyed our institutions. The army, the police; judiciary and other civil service institutions were utterly destroyed. And even the private sector were not spared. The banking sector was corrupted.
But I know some Nigerians, especially some gullible people who will tell you that PDP is no more in power that we should stop complaining. What such people fail to understand is that the change we clamoured for does not begin and end with voting out Goodluck Jonathan and voting in Muhammadu Buhari. The institutions and structures that make for governance need to change first before we can see any meaningful progress. And our institutions as of today bear the striking mark of PDP culture of corruption and ineptitude; two evils that will never allow Nigeria to move forward.
Especially, the civil service need to grasp the change before ordinary Nigerians can witness it. Our civil servants were at the heart of the evil that bedevilled Nigeria. They were enculturated by the PDP to a point of destruction. Up till now a large percentage of our civil servants are still resistant to change, they want the looting and plundering to continue because that is the only culture they know.
PDP came with its culture of corruption to destroy the service. Now we have many of them who were recruited and baptized into civil service corruption. That is why a civil servant whose annual salary is 10 million naira can boast of a property in Abuja worth over 1 billion naira. And it is across board, criminals populating the civil service.
How will President Muhammadu Buhari’s change mantra be achieved under a civil service bedevilled by corruption and inaptitude? Or how do we ensure that what happened during the budget process does not continue in the future?
1. Give attention to the civil service.
No matter how brilliant and experienced a government’s chief executive officer and his appointed or elected team may be, without the support of civil servants, such an administration is doomed for failure. The public service is the treasure house of resources, it must be continuously reformed, re-trained, challenged to compete and dare to achieve higher goals.
2. Our civil service must be run with the highest expectation of profit.
Contrary to the view that profit is the motive of Private Corporation. I will contend that the public service must be run on higher expectations of profit; expectation of profit that is higher than those set in the private sector. The difference only lies in two area; the first is that the profit of the public sector unlike that of the private sector corporations is not measured in cash but in the quality of improvement in the standard of living of citizens who are the owners of the public corporation; and secondly, in the fact that whereas the profit of private corporations are divided among the private owners as dividends, the profit of public corporation, and institutions are continually reinvested into society to expand the possibility of common good and prepare the future for the next generation.
3. President Buhari must understand the need to retrain our workforce
Preparing their mind for the change government, bearing in mind that every investment we make in people who work in civil service constitutes the strongest building block for securing the brighter future for our people.
4. There should be continus orientation programme for civil servants.
Giving orientation to employees is an important foundation for any government that wishes to achieve result. Everyone that will be part of achieving a government intended change mantra result must be clear about policy direction and character of the government and must learn the fundamentals of Good To Great Workforce.
It is important that workers understand the overall goals that the government want to accomplish with its policy. Therefore, there should be a carefully chosen orientation and materials geared towards achieving this goal. Workers should produce certain tangible results that can be referenced to evaluate their input as successful.
A progressive view of the current set of civil servants show that government must do all it can to fully equip the employees for maximum performance -- and for maximum fulfilment of set goals. The government might need to have programs that last up to a year, where the employee experiences a several-day orientation program, which includes, not only the orientation to the policy, but also various self-assessments for the employee to get clear on what he or she wants from employment and Expected Role Performance (ERP).
The training amongst others should:
• Help to reinvigorate the civil service
• Give requisite attention to policy direction of government;
• Bring attitudinal change;
• Enhance character quotient and work ethics; and
• Improve Performance
5. Don’t assume that they know, explain things to them.
President Muhammadu Buhari need to deliberately explain his new policy direction to our civil servants, give them the strategic plan, the year's budget, and the employee's policies and procedure manual if they don’t have one already. They need to give them copies of the employee policies and procedures manual and dedicated time for them to read and make up their minds if they wish to continue in the employment of Nigeria.
6. Get their commitment
Mr President needs to get them to sign a forms indicating they have reviewed the manual and will comply with its contents. Review any specific performance goals for the position the individuals holds in the ministry. Explain the performance review procedure and provide them a copy of the performance review document.
7. Give them performance goal
All employees deserve explanation of what is expected from them. A job description, which explains duties and responsibilities, often is not enough. Therefore, there should be some additional areas of focus, ideally in the context of performance goals for the employee. He should make it clear.
For example an immigration officer who issues passport should have an irreducible number of booklets he must deliver weekly. There is no reason to have so many immigration officers who earn salaries but are not useful to Nigerians. You go to immigration offices what you see is systemic corruption; they deliberately delay processes and make them cumbersome so that citizens who get frustrated are forced to part with money before they speed up things. People are forced to travel long distances from their states to Abuja when they want to do change of name. Some of them die in motor accident and many others are financially pressured because they are forced to lodge in hotels for many days.
And all these are happening in a time when people could walk into a bank nearest to their home and get these things sorted out in one hour. They have not been clearly told about the consequence (if any) of frustrating citizens and extorting money from them.
8. Our civil servants should be made to go through character Reform Sessions.
They should be made to recon that the history of successful economies in human society had always been based on respect for ethics and value system which in actual fact act as the oil that lubricate the engine of progressive development.
In conclusion, I want to say that the big problem with Nigeria is the civil service. In the coming weeks, I shall be focusing on this.
Thank you.
Great Imo Jonathan is a Public Relations, Media and Business Development Consultant.
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