Ekiti State, public service efficiency and sustainable development – Part 2

Public service efficiency as a theme for this anniversary, is a smart choice because it speaks to the urgency, in government business and operations, of improving the quality of service delivery while significantly reducing the cost of running government. However, as many are aware, the cost of governance is a crucial issue even at the federal level and for the Nigerian government.

And we do not have to look too far for the source of the bloating of the cost of doing government business. It lies, in one breath, in the whole ensemble of governance architecture of the Nigerian brand of federalism, electoral process, the presidential system and the politics that the Nigerian elites play with the development future of the great nation.

And in the collapse of the internal administrative mechanisms of the public administration system: the systematic planning for short and long-term needs; forecasting of retirement; attrition rates; anticipated vacancies founded on periodic functional reviews (to determine changes in tasks as a result of government’s new policy targets and programme emphases); structural changes and quantum of workload incidental; basic restructuring undertaken due to the privatisation of government concerns; outsourcing practices as we witnessed with the compromised monetisation policy for example; periodic personnel and process audits; review of the scheme of service; abolition of vacant posts; control of the creation of new post, units, departments and agencies; accounting for voluntary retirements, retrenchments and staff reduction due to process reengineering; automation and system changes; adversarial nature and consequences of industrial relations practices on the macro-economy; etc.

Unfortunately, cost keeps skyrocketing while efficiency was plummeting. This is due significantly to duplicated agencies and manager functions, complex and non-value adding business processes, the continuance of manual processes that could easily have been automated, in-house activities that could have delivered less cost if outsourced, resource use inefficiencies arising from procurement, creation of ad hoc structures and units of government business parallel to the existing bureaucratic structures, and lots more.

And so, on a collective basis, we are forced to deal with the dead weights of the terrible waste management culture, the resource curse, the poor assets/facilities and poor maintenance cultures. And everything culminates in bad governance. And even when we get good people in governance, the negative weight around the neck of the system swallows up every policy option.

The traditional resolution of the numerous challenges of public service efficiency, especially the matter of public expenditure, has always been around expenditure reviews, audit functions, media scrutiny of public expenditures, and most significantly the legislative oversight mostly through the roles of the public account committee.

The Federal Government even has an efficiency unit in place in the federal ministry of finance to combat the cost of governance. This is the way to go—making the public service the focal point of efficiency-rooted institutional reforms that is processed through standardisation, innovative modernising of structures and the pooling of resources. The public service system is the engine room of government’s efficiency, and hence becomes critical in the bid for good governance that will transform the lives and well-being of the citizens.

The key drivers of public service efficiency to then look out for are the following. One: there is a crucial need to deploy the force of political will power to enforce and institutionalise competency-based recruitment in the public service that will expedite the hiring of expert managers to reduce the dependence on consultants and consultancy services and the costs that accrue from it. Two: the need to reduce fraud and other fiscal and financial irregularities through efficient financial auditing.

Three: the establishment of redeemable efficiency proxies as the basis for efficiency target setting in the MDAs through centralised reporting to monitor these proxies. Four: the need to co-locate responsibility in the MDAs for policy and operational teams, especially through innovations like shared services, one-stop-shops, etc. five: new technologies need to be leveraged to achieve service redesign that will enable self-service, joined-up governance, etc. And last but not the least, digitisation becomes crucial, especially in substituting digital processes and solutions for manual ones.

To conclude, the Ekiti State government has made a very critical choice of theme for this seminar, and it serves a notice to the government itself—its political and bureaucratic leadership—that there is more to be done. It brings to mind Chief Simeon Adebo’s reaction to Chief Awolowo’s political slogan in the old western region. The Action Group operated on the slogan of “Life More Abundant” as the basis of its political manifesto. And Adebo translated the slogan into bureaucratic call-to-action as “Work More Abundantly” as a signal to the public servants that there is more to be done.

I am glad that the government has taken the bull by the horns already, and that the Ekiti people are about to witness more rounds of governance efficiency by a government that is ready to keep delivering the goods.

Concluded.

Prof. Olaopa, Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission, delivered this speech as Chairman of the 2024 Ekiti State Public Service Forum and Award of Excellence Ceremony marking the 2nd Anniversary of Governor Biodun Oyebanji, held in Ado Ekiti, recently.