SIMONKOLAWOLELIVE! simon.kolawole@thisdaylive.com, sms: 0805 500 1961
Two things happened in the last seven days that motivated me to write this article. The first, which happened on Monday, was when Governor Umar Namadi of Jigawa state went on a surprise visit to the state secretariat. As at 11am, the offices of several top civil servants were still under lock and key. They were not “on seat”. For all you care, they could be holidaying in Cairo or doing lesser hajj in Saudi Arabia. Namadi met only a handful of low-level civil servants at their duty posts — messengers, cleaners and security personnel. You will have a vital document to process in government and they will always tell you “oga is not on seat”. That is the way we roll in our dearly beloved country.
The civil service, I repeat, is the heartbeat of government. That is the machinery that formulates and implements policies as well as executes the laws and regulations of the land. The best brains populate the public services of countries that know what they are doing, but in Nigeria, it is mostly to do political favours. Many find themselves in the civil service as the last option after a fruitless job search. It was once reported that many civil servants have relocated abroad but are still drawing salaries. We are, thus, losing on all fronts: the civil service is mostly over-bloated, ineptly peopled, grossly inefficient, chronically truant, and endemically corrupt. And we want to make progress.
