FCSC Chair Suggests Ways to Revamp Nigeria's Diminishing Civil Service
The Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC) , Prof. Tunji Olaopa, yesterday suggested ways to flush out those he described as charlatans, impostors and opportunists in Nigeria's civil service.
He said there was the need to re-professionalise the service and reverse its diminishing status.
Olaopa spoke during a meeting with the Deputy President, African Association for Public Administration and Management (AAPAM), Mr. Dada Olugbenga, at the commission in Abuja.
He said: “It is professionalism that will reverse the increasingly diminishing status of this vocation that we have signed up to as our career, profession and calling.
“In this regard, I have been a civil servant all my life, and I am ever so proud to reference and revere such administrative icons of the profession as the Simeon Adebos, the Udojis, Abdul-Aziz Attah, Ayide, Asiodu, Ahmed Joda, etc. as mentors.
“I was an insider, and I know the steady but dogged efforts of colleagues over the last decades (including those in the saddle), to redeem the profession that they have dedicated their lives to.
“The issue that remains for the entire community of practice and service is to confront this loaded question: how far in the reform direction has the service gone or is capable of getting?”
Olaopa lamented that the federal civil service has been degraded to such an extent that if people now apply to join it, they do so for other reasons than the desire for professionalism.
He argued that for some reasons, the civil service jobs are most often the last on any serious professional's preference list these days.
“So, we need to keep this question in focus until we get a handle on solution framework of answers to finally reposition the profession beyond the rhetoric of it.
“And we must also keep asking ourselves the added question of what has happened to a vocation that began as an honourable and prestigious calling that prided itself for its professionalism; for it to have reached such a degraded state that it has become the butt of derision for government non-performance”, he said.
According to Olaopa, the redemption of the civil service cannot be left to chance, and to the current corps of service leadership alone.
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