The second reason for the significance of the establishment and operational functionality of the FCT-CSC is that it removes the gross injustice and arbitrariness of limiting the career management options of the civil servants who are really committed to their vocation. The zenith of the civil service profession is the position of either a permanent secretary or the head of service. Unfortunately, and for the last several decades, civil servants in the FCT have had to retire without the option of getting to the zenith of their career.

Indeed, and within this unjust administrative and institutional practice, becoming a permanent secretary to the FCT has remained one of the juiciest posting in the Federal Civil Service; a posting that steps on the aspirations of those who have the capacities to become permanent secretaries or head of service in their own right. One can then begin to see how removing the FCT from the ambit of administrative and governance framework that conditions the understanding of a civil service system in the Commonwealth especially can limit the overall understanding of even the very aspiration for institutional reform in Nigeria.

And so, with deep appreciation to the institutional thinking of the indefatigable Minister Nyesom Wike, the 2018 Act establishing the FCT-CSC, which has been aging due to lack of political will to jumpstart its implementation, has finally been resolved. The FCT-CSC has now fully connected with the FCSC and its strategic implementation plan to reposition the civil service system in Nigeria as a genuinely noble vocation that will serve as the administrative mechanism for performance managing the Renewed Hope Agenda of the Tinubu administration.

In specific terms, the two-fold objective of the FCSC in achieving the above goal is, on the one hand, to gatekeep the public administration profession through a strict oversight on and implementation of a standardised merit system. This starts from the recruitment and entry modalities and down to the entirety of the diversity management framework, including the federal character principle.

On the other hand, the FCSC is keen on transforming the CSCs into expert hubs that reflect a reformed public administration governance and human resource management professionalism that is crucially the backbone of the aspiration of the Nigerian state to become fully developmental. Overall, the FCSC aims to implement a strategy that calls on the collective cooperation of all stakeholders to restore competency-based human resource management in the Nigerian civil service and the public sector by extension.

By fully aligning with the FCSC’s strategic implementation plan, in a similar way that states, like Abia, are enthusiastically already doing, we hope that in the years ahead—while the Renewed Hope Agenda keeps unraveling productively—we will be able to put the FCSC strategic plan in full implementation.

The FCSC strategic plan is founded on four fundamental and correlated goals: (a) merit-based appointment that sees to institutionalise transparent, technology-driven recruitment aligned with federal character and meritocracy; (b) performance-driven promotion that will enable the system to link career progression with competence, measurable outputs, and accountability through modern performance management systems; (c) ethical transparency as the basis for strengthening fairness, firmness, and efficiency implementing disciplinary and ethical safeguards; and (d) institutional capacity development that instigate the civil service system to modernise governance, ICT, infrastructure, financial management, and staff welfare, as means of benchmarking globally acceptable HR practices.

To arrive at a sense of direction that the FCSC needs to take in order to be able to adequately translate these pillars of institutional reform into implementational success, we deemed it fit, as a first order of business, to carry out some basic housekeeping diagnosis, including a PPESTLE—physical infrastructure, political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental factors—and SWOT—strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats—analyses to determine the capacity and capability of the FCSC to initiate the strategic plan. This was also followed (a) desk reviews on civil/public service commissions in different jurisdictions, and (b) wide consultations with stakeholders to understand their needs and expectations from the Commission. And as a second step, the FCSC has commenced putting in place reform imperatives around which her capability can emerge:
Appointment of a certified human resource expert professionals to head the secretariats of the service commissions across the federation at earliest time possible.

Deployment of an initial cohort of certified and retrained HR professionals, drawn from serving federal officers in the administrative officer pool, as pioneer core staff to serve in the FCSC for an initial minimum of five years in the first instance.

Fresh recruitment and solicitation of a critical mass of expert HR professionals under special arrangement to set up a new professionalized FCSC secretariat.

Renovate and totally overhaul the deplorable FCSC complex into an enhanced working environment for staff to provide enhanced working environment for staff.

Modernisation of service commissions core operations and processes through computerisation and digitisation.

Institution of monitoring, evaluation and reporting systems that allow Commissions’ proper oversight over the power delegated to the MDAs.

Strengthening policy and research hubs within the Service Commissions to facilitate town and gown synergy that leverages research and intellectual capacities of public administration and policy scholars and practitioners for knowledge management and problem solving.

Strengthening the Commission’s ongoing collaborative and partnership efforts with states’ CSC, regional and global communities of practice and service.

It is within the context of all these unfolding developments around the FCSC’s strategic and implementation plan that the significance of the FCT-CSC becomes all the more important. The FCSC in a word has another strategic partner that could strengthen her resolve in enhancing the professionalism and performance capability of the civil service to leap-jump the Renewed Hope Agenda into democratic reckoning.

Concluded.

Olaopa is chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission and Professor of Public Administration.