Implication of the Tenure Policy Suspension for the Service
The first obvious implication of the suspension is that it would reverse the gains made since the policy was introduced, as highlighted above.
The second effect is that the suspension would exacerbate the heinous act of records falsification currently permeating the service. This is because, unlike regular officers who, by their record of entering the service at 25 years of age and spending 27 years to attain the grade of Director, would have their 8-year tenure on GL 17 co-terminate with their 60 years of age, most of the officers with potentials to spend more than 8 years without attaining 60 years of age are those who transferred to the civil service mid-stream in their careers. Since their previous records of service were not known, they are able to manipulate those records to enable them stay well below the retirement age ceiling. Such manipulation of record would compound not just the crisis of succession in the service but also the wage bill of government, as it loads the service at the top at the expense of renewal at the lower levels.
The third effect is that it would compound the already festering problems arising from the selective recruitment into GL 16 and 17 positions, carried out by the FCSC in 2013 and 2014. These exercises have now created a new generation of civil servants on the grade of Director in their late 30s and early 40s who are poised to spend another 20 years on those grade levels. Most of the officers were from States in the southern part of the country, especially the South-South geo-political zone. Their entry into the civil service has been to the detriment of the hardworking, committed and loyal civil servants with not less than 25 years cognate experience within the federal service system. The fact that these officers were brought into the service, using the consequential vacancies which those waiting in line had expected would be available for their own promotion, was one of the main issues that led the GL 16 officers to take the FCSC to court in 2015. The removal of tenure would indeed perpetuate this group of officers and the service would be back to status quo ante. The President has multiple channels of advice.
One fact that the general public must always appreciate is that a sitting President has many channels from which to obtain advice on any issue and prominent among these are eminent and respected Nigerians who had distinguished careers in the civil service. It is a fact that, for many civil servants who served from Independence up till the late ‘70s, “Tenure” in the civil service system is a terminology that they find rather difficult to relate with. This is because, under the parliamentary system in which they served, there was nothing like tenure and, indeed, it was the civil service commission that screened and recommended to the Prime Minister appointments of Permanent Secretaries. Such opinions might have weighed in on the abrogation of the policy as it happened in the 2012 Report of the Presidential Committee on the Review of the Reform Processes in Nigerian Public Service. One could then appreciate the angle from where the President might have taken that decision.
However, there is a limit to which one can romanticise the civil service career management processes, procedures and guidelines of our pre- and immediate post-independence administration, especially in the Presidential system, which we now operate. Even if we were to be operating the same old political (parliamentary) system, the society is dynamic and the civil service system must respond to new challenges by fine-tuning its guidelines, procedures and processes for it to remain stable and relevant to the needs of the society. It is common knowledge, for example, that there was a time not too long ago when, in the rural communities, the common practice was for traders to display their wares by the roadside, assured that passersby interested in any of their goods would take what they wanted and place the exact cost by the remaining wares on display. This was also true of newspaper vendors in public places. Over the years, the experience of those involved in the practice has made them to overhaul such methods of transactions. The same scenario is what is at play in the public service. Every generation and/or system must come up with its own management policy/guidelines that will enable it to respond to its challenges.
The controversy about the tenure policy is not new. Its announcement on 26 August, 2009 following the official gazette of 25 August, 2009, was greeted with both jubilation and fury; so it is not surprising that it has resurfaced under a different administration. The book RGGN, devoted its Volume 2 (Leadership & Political Will) to the key reform initiatives of government in the civil service from 1999-2014, to serve as institutional memory to guide those left behind and, especially, for the new administration. With specific reference to the tenure policy and going by what is now playing out, my statement in the Introduction chapter to RGGN, page xxxiii-xxxiv, is instructive: “There is so much in the public domain about the Tenure Policy. The pros and cons have split the general public into two, yet most of what have been peddled to whip up sentiments against the policy is not fact based. The true story is presented under the title: Tenure Policy – The Story and a Critical Evaluation of its Implementation, which also addresses opponents’ allegations… Highlighting the shortcoming and prescribing the way forward is to ensure that government is not misadvised as to where to beam its searchlight whenever the policy comes for review.”
Fallout of delayed action and of the silence of the civil service leadership
The general public, civil service labour unions and the media are worried that no one is offering explanation on what is going on with the Tenure Policy and there are negative comments across the civil service, expressing concerns on how the current civil service leadership has been handling key career management issues. On this particular issue of the suspension of the tenure policy, one can appreciate the difficulty on the part of the civil service leadership, as they are torn between two contending principles: the principle of professional ethics which demands that, once they have made their submission, they are to abide by the directives of their principal; and the principle of personal conscience, which behooves them not to condemn a policy of which they are the beneficiaries. However, as it is often the case in matters of change management, it appears that the compelling need for proactive action as well as timely and effective communication are yet to have a foothold in the operations of the civil service management.
Obviously, there were signposts of amber lights that should have woken the civil service leadership to the need to address the tenure issue long before the President took his decision. The first was during the public presentation of Restoring Good Governance in Nigeria in June 2015, when this writer called the attention of the then Head of the Civil Service of the Federation to the fact that the failure to abide by the provisions of the extant circulars on Interpretation of Public Service Rules on Compulsory Retirement Age/Year of Service in Relation to Tenured Appointments of Serving Public Officers, either by act of omission or commission, had rendered irregular the appointments of the entirety of the permanent secretary cadre and the head of the civil service himself. The second wakeup call was the controversy generated by the purported “extension of service” of the Permanent Secretary, Petroleum Resources, in February this year, as described earlier; while the third was the labour union supported controversy in the Federal Ministry of Health where the Consultant Grade One officers complained about the directive for them to proceed on retirement at the completion of 8 years on the post, citing the fact that the Perm Sec of the Ministry was originally one of them. In all of these instances the civil service leadership was unable to speak to the public or address civil servants on the issue.
There is no doubt that if any of these wakeup calls had been heeded, it would have offered necessary opportunities to address the shortcomings of the tenure policy implementation as well as the reservations of respected Nigerians whose opinions appeared to have weighed heavily on the decision of the President to suspend the policy.
The President has a Point, but…
It is logical to assume that if the institutions and personalities that were charged with the responsibilities of appointment, promotion, discipline, establishment and records were working efficiently and with integrity, there might have been no need to institute Tenure, at least at the level of Director, as there would have been no officer spending more than 8 years on the grade. That may be true; unfortunately, those institutions were not working with integrity. And right now, they still are not. As stated earlier, the selective recruitments into GL 16 and 17 positions, carried out by the FCSC in 2013 and 2014, have created a new generation of civil servants in their late 30s and early 40s who are poised to spend another 20 years at those grade levels, to the detriment of hardworking, committed and loyal civil servants with not less than 25 years cognate experience within the federal service system. The difference this time, is that, unlike in the past when the favoured officers were predominantly from the northern states, the favoured officers are from States in the southern part of the country, especially the South-South geo-political zone. The removal of tenure would perpetuate this group of officers and we would back to the status quo ante.
The fact that these officers were brought into the service, using the consequential vacancies of those who retired and which otherwise would have been available to promote those waiting in line, was one of the main issues that led the GL 16 officers to take the FCSC to court. These critical acts of the FCSC, committed in violation of its own guidelines, are certainly taking the service back to the conditions that the tenure policy was designed to solve. It is therefore, doubtful if the current FCSC as constituted can regain the trust of the civil servants as an institution that should be trusted to live up to these responsibilities.
Undoubtedly, the President is committed to the anti-corruption crusade. It is, therefore, easy to appreciate that the imperative of holding public institutions accountable to do their jobs properly is what may have been the intent of the President for the suspension of the policy, as it now stands. However, in the face of the current performance of the institutions responsible for managing these processes, this decision appears to be a double quick march when the cavalry is not yet in full trot.
The Way Forward
Initiation and formulation of sectorial policies, for consideration and approval of the President-in-Council, as well as the defence of those policies during implementation, are ministerial responsibilities. For the federal civil service, these responsibilities presently fall under the purview of the HCSF. However, by not coming out to explain and/or defend this decision of the chief executive of the federation as it affects the public service, ostensibly in deference to the hackneyed cliché that civil servants are to be seen and not heard, has once again opened up the debate about the desirability of an additional appointment for the public service from outside the ranks of career civil servants. The 2005-2007 experience, with Mallam Nasir el Rufai as Minister and leader of the Public Service Reform Team and the success it recorded, gives credence to this postulation.
It is for this reason that RGGN, Volume 1 chapter 19, advocates an institutional framework to strengthen the bureaucracy through the establishment of a Federal Public Service Council, to be chaired by a “Minister in the Presidency, who must be a person of impeccable integrity with vast public service experience”, to perform functions similar to those of the Nigeria Police Council and the National Judicial Council. In the alternative, since the legal instrument to establish such a council would take some time, the recommendation contained in the National Strategy for Public Service Reforms (NSPSR) for the appointment of a Special Adviser to the President on Governance & Institutional Reforms becomes the viable option at the moment.
The National Strategy, put together by a DFID-sponsored team of consultants led by Prof. Ladipo Adamolekun, was initiated at the tail end of the tenure of this writer at the BPSR and was completed in 2009. It went through a series of stakeholders’ sensitisation up till 2011 but has since been caught in the bureaucratic web of needful adjustments and modifications to reflect the policy thrust of post Yar’ Adua administrations. The latest of these modifications are informed by the need to align the Strategy with critical driving principles of this administration, especially those of zero-based budgeting and the social safety net programmes. It is expected that with the passionate drive of the present DG BPSR, Dr. Joe Abah, who incidentally was the DFID manager that midwifed the Strategy at the project stage, very soon, the Steering Committee on Reforms should be able to give final accent to the Strategy for consideration and approval by the Federal Executive Council. Considering that a Strategy to drive the public sector reforms of government is still in the bureaucratic mill 9 years after it was conceived, spanning the tenure of 7 heads of the civil service, tells a lot about the challenge being faced in the public service.
As I have stated severally, in the matter of public sector reforms, Proactive Initiatives, Timely / Effective Communication, and Courage and Confidence, are the three elements that the civil service leadership cannot afford not to be armed with, if it wants to succeed. These three elements were the driving forces for the success recorded in public service reforms from 2004-2009.
The principle of proactive initiatives and the need to take cue from the actions of one’s principal demand that by now, the civil service leadership, working with the FCSC, would have subjected the directorate level officers to the same type of assessment that the President carried out on the permanent secretaries in November 2015. Such an exercise would have enabled the system to remove undesirable elements from the civil service system and open up space, not just for the advancement of the hardworking, honest and committed officers, but for service renewal and rejuvenation at the lower officer grade levels of GL 08-10 after the senior officers would have moved up. If the yardstick for the removal of those permanent secretaries was corruption, as the public was allowed to speculate, the general opinion is that there are more corrupt elements at the directorate levels than at the permanent secretary level. By the delay in taking the same assessment to those grade levels, the service is inadvertently creating a situation where some of those elements may end up being appointed into higher positions when the time comes.
Deploying proactive strategy to an issue or policy also demands that the civil service leadership secures, well ahead of its principal, the support of the stakeholders and deploys adequate public enlightenment to the issue. The support of the stakeholders would not only confirm public acceptance but imbue the civil service leadership with the required courage to act.
The Council of Retired Federal Permanent Secretaries (CORFEPS), as an organisation, is a major stakeholder that sees the civil service as its only constituency. With its membership cutting across not just the geopolitical spectrum of Nigeria but generations, CORFEPS parades the benefit of inter-generational bureaucratic capacity, to assist the civil service leadership to meet the expectations of the political leadership in responding to governance challenges. The advice and technical support of a group that parades the likes of Philip Asiodu, Ahmed Joda, Francesca Emanuel, Baba Gana Kingibe, Augustine Okafor and Yayale Ahmed etc. would no doubt constitute a formidable backbone of courage for the civil service leadership to act on difficult issues; and CORFEPS is ever ready to provide this support in the spirit of the Yoruba adage which says, “Agba ki nwa loja ki ori omo tuntun wo” – meaning: “A child is not expected to go astray under the watch of the elder.” All that is required is for the civil service leadership to ask, because, according to another Yoruba adage, “the child that lifts up both hands to the elder, in expectation of being carried, is the one that the elder would reach out to.”
Let no one be deceived that the decision to suspend the policy has enjoyed a tractable level of acceptance within the public service. On the contrary, there is palpable anger among the hardworking and non-politically connected civil servants who see the policy as the only objective and equitable avenue available to them to have the vacancy that would enable them earn their merited career advancement. In addition, the suspension of the policy is already generating resentment for the would-be beneficiaries and it is beginning to polarize the public service along the north-south geopolitical divide. These same feelings are unfortunately being transferred to the national polity, judging from views being expressed in the press and social media. And rather sadly, there is a section of the public that believes that the decision to suspend the policy is to enable the ‘north’ recoup its own dues of selective appointment and transfers of yet-to-mature officers as was done in 2014 and 2015 under the Jonathan administration.
As it stands, it would be a most welcomed development if the President would set up a Panel to (a) examine the Tenure policy in all its ramifications, (b) address the current shortcomings, and (c) make appropriate recommendations to safeguard the effective implementation of the policy within the overarching national strategy of public service renewal and revitalisation. In the meantime, an official statement from the Presidency explaining the rationale for the suspension and/or reassuring public servants of a clear policy thrust for the stability of the public service would be a welcomed relief. Certainly, not only is the current official silence on the issue not just golden, it has the dangerous potential of destroying what is left of the confidence that the last batch of the fast-disappearing generation of committed, hardworking and loyal civil servants may still hold for the system.
CONCLUDED
Adegoroye,PhD, OON, is a retired pioneer Director General/Permanent Secretary of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR) and the current National Publicity Secretary of the Council of Retired Federal Permanent Secretaries (CORFEPS).
