Is the public service at the tipping point?

There is a wide-spread concern for the government’s penchant for extending the tenures of public officers. This is not a one-off thing. This executive fiat has been unleashed in this direction so many times, that it is now becoming the routine rather than an aberration. Sometimes ago when the government extended the tenures of the Service Chiefs in the Armed Forces there were some grunts here and there but they were muted. This was understandable because analysts and other busybodies would rather stay away from the issue as the conditions of service of the Armed Forces is rather opaque. Even those who probably know, shrugged it off as probably one of those prerogatives allowed the Commander-in-Chief in times of war which the situation in some states of the far-north alludes.

But why should the government refuse to follow due process in the appointment of Permanent Secretaries or decide to extend the tenures of a select few even though their condition of service is manifest and very much in the public domain? It is this debasement of the processes that rocks the system to its very foundation and sends confusing signals to the public. It amounts to a systemic rape on the system. One recalls at least three instances that the civil service had such systemic trauma.

Readers may recall the massive purge of over 10,000 civil servants by General Murtala’s regime, of mostly officials that served under the administration of General Yakubu Gowon’s military Administration. The purge, ostensibly carried out to cleanse out corrupt and redundant elements in the civil service, was done without due process, over a period of only two months. It swept away officials from the rank of Permanent Secretary to the class of messengers. The nation’s loss was colossal, sending away to the streets the good and the bad all lumped together, including some that have remained role models till date and many without any terminal benefits or pensions. This singular act nearly destroyed the professional, non-partisan, fearless, prestigious, merit driven civil service and the public service inherited from the British colonial administration. In the process, the nation is said to have lost a great deal of institutional memory and valuable interpersonal connections particularly those with international reaches.

The next infamous instance was during the Babangida military regime when the Decree 43 of 1988 was enacted apparently to professionalize the civil service. Under this decree, the functions of the independent Public Service Commission were transferred to the Ministers. Transient as they often were, Ministers were empowered to hire and fire civil servants. The Minister replaced the Permanent Secretary, now re-designated Director General, as the Accounting Officer of the Ministry. Though the decree was repealed in 1995 the damage done to the Public Service under the decree still afflicts the Service.

Recently during the Yar’Adua administration a tenure policy principally aimed at the top echelon of the Civil Service, namely, the Permanent Secretary and the Director was introduced. This policy which limited their tenure in office to a maximum of one four-year term renewable only once and no more has served as disincentive to loyalty and commitment to the Service by civil and public servants. Even though the tenure has been suspended, it still hangs of the necks of civil servants in these categories like an albatross promising to impair the smooth performance of their functions.

Somehow despite these heavy blows the service has tottered along, repairing the damage at every stage, and forging ahead as the engine room for implementing the policies and decisions of government. In this regard the Federal Civil Service has been outstanding in the maintenance of standards as it affects recruitment (including transfers from other services), promotion, discipline and leaving the service. The service always got its groove back, bouncing with new sinews to strengthen and toughen it for newer tasks.

However, decisions taken by this government not to adhere to the terms of appointments to the top echelon of the civil service is rather troubling. Admittedly section 171 of the 1999 constitution (as amended) has given the President the prerogative to appoint the Permanent Secretary (among other offices mentioned therein) in Federal Civil Service. It is nevertheless generally assumed that by convention and general practice over time the person to be appointed into the office of Permanent Secretary would be drawn from among serving civil servants (as it is expressly stated in section 171(3) that ‘the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation shall not be made except given among Permanent Secretaries’). I guess it is not the honourable intention of the enactors of this constitution to allow the occupants of the office of the President to negatively exploit this lacuna in the constitution to the detriment of the serving civil servants. This government has already gone against the grain by appointing two Permanent Secretaries from outside the system for the most important ministries of Finance and Power.

But that is not the only aberration that is impinging negatively on the service. The government is not only appointing strangers to the civil service to top positions but also elongating the tenures of sitting Permanent Secretaries and other high ranking officials. During the first term of this government a Permanent Secretary’s appointment was extended by over one year after the due date for retirement from service for one contrived reason or the other. This is despite the fact that the Public Service Rules 020810 clearly states that: The compulsory retirement age in the service shall be 60 years or 35 years of pensionable service, whichever is earlier. No officer shall be allowed to remain in service after attaining the retirement age of 60 or 35 years of pensionable service whichever is earlier.

The matter has been further exacerbated now by the extension of the tenure of seven (7) retiring permanent secretaries for one year in one fell swoop in September 2019! Since then, the extension of the tenure of service for a retiring Commissioner of Police, who was supposed to retire in 2019 has been extended and another Director in the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) who was supposed to have retired has had her tenure extended by another year by the President.

Many are asking, when would this deliberate aberration of the Public Service Rules end and how far can it go before it is taken as the norm, thereby dealing an irreparable harm to the public service? The impact of this deliberate breach of the Public Service Rules, apart from negatively affecting the morale and psyche of serving civil/public servants, also sets a wrong precedence to future incoming administrations. Already, some copycat actions in the illadvised direction is been emulated by some state governments. It has recently been reported that the Benue State Governor has approved the tenure of the retiring Head of Service for another two years. And we may recall that the Kano State Governor had done a mass sack of all Permanent Secretaries in the state civil service in May this year. The Permanent Secretaries were told to reapply for the position if they wanted to continue in the service.

These unjustifiable appointments and extension of tenure only add to the feelings that the civil service is at a tipping point, where adherence to the applicable public service rules has become haphazard. The only path of sanity is for government to be reasonable and stop this ruinous interference in the processes of the civil service.