The Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC), Prof. Tunji Olaopa, has urged a reform of discipline systems in the federal civil service .
 
Olaopa made the call while delivering the keynote lecture at the maiden edition of the International Civil Service Conference organised by the office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation as part of the 2025 African Public Service Week in Abuja.
 
The professor of public administration, who spoke on the theme, ‘Consequence Management in the Civil Service: Reforming Discipline and Grievance Systems’, decried the decline of discipline in the civil service.
 
He defined consequence management as the use of penalties, sanctions as well as positive corrective measures including motivations and incentives to deal with breaches and non-compliance with rules and regulations as evidence of staff (in)discipline.
    
According to him, there is in place a comprehensive set of rules and codes of conduct that cover all areas of staff actions in the governance codes and regulatory instruments.
 
To him, disciplinary measures are clearly defined for different staff members. Some of these include warning, reprimand, withholding of salary, deferment of increment, interdiction, suspension, withholding of promotion and demotion. He condemned the level of staff indiscipline in the civil service despite these well-spelt-out sanctions.
 
To Olaopa, the existing era contrasts starkly with the 1960s and 1970s when the Nigerian civil service was hallmarked by discipline. He said that the glorious era of the civil service was distinguished by its strict adherence to a set of moral codes that were inherited from the British.
 
He ,however, noted:  “All of these became fractured over the years, especially since the purge of the civil service in the mid-70s and the deleterious incidence of the Dutch and double Dutch disease planted during the oil boom era that have become the norm today .  “The value of honour in service and capacity to speak truth to power were then gradually eroded, and replaced with a ‘something for nothing’ mentality that is aptly captured in Mahatma Gandhi’s sins of the Nigerian society today – wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, business without morality, science without humanity, religion without sacrifice, and politics without principle.”
 
All these, according to Olaopa, called for deep-seated systemic overhaul, reinvention of first principles and code of ethics and of conduct , and the implementation of a cultural adjustment programme that is rooted in a value audit and mental remodeling.
 
To return the civil service to the path of discipline, Olaopa urged a timely resolution of disciplinary cases and the avoidance of procedural errors arising from a lack of professionalism and training for staff who handle disciplinary cases, appeals, and staff grievances, leading to a legion of legal challenges which keep posing financial burden on government through judgment debts.
 
Noting a relationship between workers’ conditions of service and their ethical conduct, Olaopa called for a review of civil servants’ remuneration to restore discipline in the civil service.

He also stressed the importance of role models in the administrative leadership cadre whose personal example could influence employee behaviour.