Old, dying board members and Nigeria’s public sector opportunities

Iinsist that for Nigeria to move forward, what we need is first a strong public sector that works – and this we must achieve. We need to expand our public sector in the right places. We need to employ young people who will show government presence in every village. Nigeria is presently limited to the cities. Our governments have no right indeed to consider our villages as part of Nigeria because they haven’t done anything for those villages in decades. They only go there to campaign and confuse those poor fellows.

It is sadder that as much as this is the quintessential truth, actions by government attempt to put a lie to it. The recent appointment of dead men to boards of parastatals which is being painfully or cavalierly but unsuccessfully rationalised by agents of government is putting a bad face to public sector. Many of the boards are useless and can be collapsed. For example, each Federal Medical Centre does not need a board. All their Chief Medical Directors can be director in one board that covers every FMC. Our public sector is top heavy and dysfunctional. And so these appointments are just to allow the boys get access to largesse. Buhari misses it again. He ought to have appointed them much earlier if at all, after collapsing many of the boards and merging most of the MDAs. What is the use of unleashing these guys, many of whom are in financial distress, 3 years into his tenure?

Let us go back to our concern; public sector employment. I am providing evidence to show that in countries that work, their public sectors are fairly large, reach to every nook and cranny of their societies, are relevant to the people, and actually get some work done. And that is what we should aspire to before this unproductive call for entrepreneurship is embarked upon.

That is why in the USA, the largest employer is the Department of Defence, with 3.6million staff, followed by Walmart and McDonalds. The Chinese, with a population of 1.4billion, have strong public sector employment in defense, energy, crude oil and gas and postal departments, where a total of 6.5million or 0.4% of their massive population/or 1% of their working population is employed.

Only Japan and South Korea, of all rich countries, employs a low 7% of their workforce in the public sector. France has all of 36% and UK, 21%. In South Korea however, it is becoming an issue. Their new president won on the basis of job creation – public sector jobs. Nigeria’s Punch Newspaper carried a report recently, titled “When Graduates Become Janitors”. See http://punchng.com/ when-graduates-become-janitors/. It is about South Korea, which has now realized its error in having a low ratio of public to private sector employment. I extract the below from the report;

According to a research paper released by Hyundai Economic Research Institute in April, the number of entrants for the civil service examination increased from 185,000 in 2011 to 257,000 last year, with graduates attracted by the security of civil service jobs…. Students and young graduates voted in droves for President Moon Jae-in who won the presidential elections in May, in part promising to ease youth unemployment by creating more jobs in the public sector. He described himself as the “jobs president” during his election campaign…. Moon has said he wants to convert contract workers to permanent positions and create 810,000 new public-sector jobs over the next five years, an increase of more than 60 per cent, which will cost the government $18bn…. The government in July implemented blind recruitment, scrapping educational background (to reduce an overreliance on graduates from a handful of top universities), age, photographs (which led to a boom in plastic surgery), and height and weight statistics on applications for public organisations.

Let me reiterate my concern; because of the tendency to steal and plunder, the Nigerian government has very little plans for its people and is making us all live a very hard life. Most young graduates – and even secondary school leavers – who are out of work today should be gainfully employed. Organized countries around the world ensure a certain level of comfort for their people and position them in critical areas to ensure their national security. Nigeria’s approach ignores the possibility of living simple, decent lives and making do with one’s salary, like is done everywhere else in the world. Just as the older people are looking for big money to stash abroad, they have wired the younger ones to look for opportunities to ‘hammer’ through any fraudulent means. There is no middle ground. Get rich, or die trying. Countries with fairly large – and responsible – public sectors on the other hand, have through that process, taught their people contentment, patriotism, and responsibility to society. It’s no wonder Nigerians don’t feel Nigerian. Most people claim to be from their tribe first, and if Nigeria is lucky, they could be Nigerians second. Why? They don’t feel Nigeria has done anything for them lately. And they are kinda right, though they should be urgently rescued for today’s world has no space for tribal warlords.

One of the areas where underemployment in public sector is evident is in policing. A recent report has it that we are the most underpoliced country in the world. Hear…

“There are 219 police officers for every 100,000 Nigerians, well below both the index median of 300, and the sub-Saharan Africa region average of 268. This limits the capacity of the force to measure up to its law and order mandate…. In terms of process, legitimacy and outcomes, the story is not different which makes the Force fall short of the required standard.”

So Nigerian Police Force does not only have a corruption problem, they have a capacity problem. The numbers could easily be doubled so long as our big men don’t hijack them all for bag-carrying purposes, and so long as they don’t continue to be menace to the society.

Further evidence of public sector manning levels around the world, is shown below:

OECD Averages of Public Sector Employment as % of Labour Force (19%) PAUCITY OF DATA What exactly is the number of public servants employed in Nigeria? A 2005 figure based on work done by Dr Goke Adegoroye shows almost 2.3million, though data availability is one of our greatest problems. Even if we double that today, it is less than 5million. Our working population should be around 100-120million people, meaning that our public service employs less than 5% of our working population, as against the OECD average of 21%. Almost half of the numbers are ghost workers too. Double jeopardy. We may be riled by Nigeria’s public service and its failures but let us check honestly. How many people do we know, considering the population of Nigeria – including people in the villages – who are employed in the civil service at any level? They are very few.

Still we have to look for growth areas. With 2,118 staff in the National Bureau for Statistics, it is evident that they cannot cover a population of 180,000,000, and the vastness of Nigeria’s 923,000 kilometre square. The Office for National Statistics in the UK has at least 3,500 staff, and we are talking of a country where people are used to releasing data – something which is alien here. We can do much better, and employ more people in these areas. Nigeria needs more statisticians and data gatherers. More nurses. More doctors. More policemen. More park rangers. More sanitary inspectors. More civil defense people. More firemen. More street-sweepers. The list is endless. And we need them now! I rest my case.