Civil service and coups

I think it was around mid 90s when I served in Sierra Leone that a colleague came to me to advice me on how diplomats react to coups. I told him to lock up the embassy, go home and wait for them (the military junta that executed the coup) to issue a release … Thereafter he can open the office and anybody that asks him that release is what he will use to go about his business.

So I am saying that by mid 90s we in Nigeria already had the experience of how to react to coups but in 1966 when the coup took place, the civil service, which was still in its infancy and was just consolidating, having come from the colonial service. In all the teachings that were done to prepare them, I am not sure they gave them any guideline on how to deal with coup situation.

Backbone of government

But when you look at every available evidence of the reaction of the civil service, they performed reasonably well to ensure that the government was kept going, they helped the new entrants to settle down and at the end of the day, whatever success in the early years particularly under the Yakubu Gowon regime, the civil service was the backbone of that administration.

The civil service of that time, given the quality of men and women performed reasonably well. They were as shocked as most people when the coup took place, but they did the best they could to keep the country going, to settle down the new men of power and influence and to ensure that the Nigerian government was running smoothly.

By the time the second coup occurred, Muritala (Mohammed) and co felt that the country needed to break up. It was the civil service – the quality, the foresight, brilliancy of men and women in the civil service at that time at the upper level that called the military administrators together to say no you can’t do this, we have to find a way to keep this country together. That is the beauty of it in one hand, and the tragic regret is that consequently after that the successive governments have weakened the service and its going to take Nigeria time to rebuild the service to the quality that was intended by the original founders of the service.
Cordiality between ministers and the service

One of the sad things about this country is that nobody is interested in history anymore. If you go down into the history books of the civil service, you will see even the relationship between the Minister and the Permanent Secretary, the Minister and the civil service. No Minister would act without the advice of the civil service and the civil service because of its rules and regulations ensured that things were properly run and that administrations were efficient. The Minister at that time respected them.

I was at the anniversary of Chief Festus Okotie- Eboh (Minister of Finance in the First Republic) and it was interesting reading Chief Okotie-Eboh’s statement on his Permanent Secretary in Parliament.

Poor relationship with the service

Today what you hear is that every Minister complains about the Permanent Secretary, and the Permanent Secretaries try to give advice as best as they can but they come in with consultants and those who have no clue of what goes on in the service … So for me the service did well at that time given the circumstances, which they found themselves and it is to the credit of the service that they kept the government going. In a time of crisis and everywhere you find crisis within the political class, the service keep the government running.

I don’t think they have been able to cope effectively well because successive governments have continued to weaken the service. Today in a number of states, governments are retiring a whole generation of civil servants at the same time. When you retire 19 Permanent Secretaries in a state and we know that the service is already weak then you now retire 19 Permanent Secretaries at the start of an administration, you have further weakened the ability of that service to help the government because in the best of time the service is supposed to help the government to settle down. He should have said okay I am going to use these experienced officers to settle down, use them so that my government can take off properly. May be after a year or two by that time you must have identified the good ones and the bad ones and then you can do whatever reshuffle you want to make.

Non-observance of civil service rules

But I also think that there is a regulation that is not being observed. I don’t think you can just wake up one morning and retire any civil servant or Permanent Secretary without proven allegations against them other than the fact that they served in the last regime. The civil service is supposed to serve all regimes. But in this country, the more we behave the way we are doing, that every regime comes you retire Permanent Secretaries and appoint another set; you are continuously weakening the ability of the service to be strong and to perform its constitutional responsibilities.

Implication for the country

The implication for the nation is that the service continues to get weaker and weaker in terms of capacity because you spend so much training a group of officers and at the point that they could be useful to the nation, there is a complete sweep particularly in the states. Then you appoint another people, you begin to train, they begin to learn the rope, they begin to acquire the experience then new regimes come in four years time at the state level, you retire that group again; that is not how it should be done.

It is not a question of whether it impacts on the country positively or negatively, its the fact that it impacts on the capacity of the civil service to carry out its functions, to carry out its constitutional roles to advice the government to be efficient and to manage resources properly.

Weakened capacity and corruption

In fact, this whole issue of corruption that we are discussing today was because the civil service was weakened over the years and those who have no constitutional rights in terms of the management of resources that was vested significantly on the service are now directing affairs. In those days it would have been very difficult for a Minister to by-pass the Permanent Secretary and tell the Director of Finance to release so much money to A, B, C, D. The Permanent Secretaries of those days will not allow it and there are evidences of what they did. I am sure if you read a book, you must have heard of where a Permanent Secretary queried a minister for using a vehicle on a Saturday. Can any Permanent Secretary do that today? Impossible. So we need to continuously realize that the future of this country lies in building strong institutions, to make them strong and to allow them perform their constitutional roles.