Institutional reform advocacy is essentially about critical optimism in the face of significant institutional dysfunction. To be an institutional reformer and not be an optimist is, for me, a contradiction in terms. Optimism is what keeps sustaining the belief of the reformer in the possibility of transformation.

Without such a belief, the reformer has no business in the space of institutional reform. This is the optimism that I have developed over time, after I made up my mind to dedicate myself to researching the historical and administrative dynamics that led to the institutional dysfunction of the Nigeria public service system.

This same optimistic realism has sustained me through various government succession since the Babangida administration. And it is a similar but even more potent optimistic assessment of what is realistically possible that I am bringing to my assessment of the Tinubu administration and its emerging determination to succeed at all cost.

Despite the legitimacy and credibility contestations swirling around the administration at the moment but which the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) has happily put behind us, there is no doubt that the Tinubu presidency is aware of its historical mandate as a critical juncture in the bid to better the lots of Nigerians. And so, given the direction of its policy maneuvers so far, and in spite of the many concessions to Real politik, I am assured that a most significant game-changing dynamic, more potent and with a great chance of succeeding than I have witnessed since 1979, might be unfolding. Of course, there are many policy areas that the government is still apparently struggling to make sense of, but I amencouraged by the administration’s open-mindedness and humility in searching for directions to take.

We cannot however make the mistake of taking the success of this government for granted as a foregone conclusion. Development success, from the many lessons of history, requires hard work in many directions and at many levels. And one thing that the new administration has going for it, as a guiding landmark, are the many glaring mistakes of the past which ought to serve as the basis for continuous learning and strategic framework moderated by critical success factors that must be injected into the government thinking.

One fundamental critical factor necessary for determining national transformation, which the administration itself has decisively put a finger on, is the reform of the civil service.

The bureaucracy is a necessary complement to the administrative success of any government.

Indeed, it is fundamentally central to the functionality of democratic governance. It would however be most presumptuous for me to argue that a government cannot succeed without the civil service that is capability ready (even though it already has a bureaucracy that is stuck in its own complexities). Of course, this concession derives from a fringe literature that any government that depends on the variability of the civil service for its policy direction has already failed before even taking off. One strategy that many governments have taken on, since the 1980s, involved setting up parallel structures that allowed them to sidestep the focused and often onerous task of reforming the bureaucracy.

This goes against the grain of those historical examples of resolute government interventions that took seriously the task of reprofiling and reforming their civil service. We can easily recall the decision that earn Margaret Thatcher the moniker of the “Iron Lady”: the uncompromising resolve to reform the British civil service and undermine the adversarial labour relation that was holding Britain back. We cannot also forget the role that the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) played in post-war Japan and her resolve to overcome her economic deficit and regain her leadership in global affairs. Back home, the old western region and the Awolowo-Adebo administrative model, as well as the unparalleled success of Gowon’s super permanent secretaries, signal how paying attention to the reform of the civil service can give the lie to neglecting it.

Indeed, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the head of government of the old western region, gave a
glowing tribute to the civil service of the region and its capability readiness, under Chief Simeon

Adebo, to implement the policy imperatives of the Action Group (AG). And yet, many successive Nigerian governments, since independence, have also taken the unproductive direction of sidetracking civil service. And this could explain why, in a sense, the system has been characterized by over-bloatedness. After all, most of the personnel of the parallel structures that government set up end up getting offloaded into the service.
To be continued tomorrow