Carry On, Oronsaye

Another very intriguing rumour is again circulating among Abuja civil servants; that come next week, the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HOCS) Mr Steve Oronsaye would bring out another explosive circular that would deal another merciless blow on civil servants. This time Mr Oronsaye is said to be contemplating reducing the retirement age of civil servants to 55, down from 60 years or the attainment of 30 years in service.If the rumour turns out to be true, the country should expect a handful of suicides across the country. You only need to see and hear their reactions to the recent reform package that the HOSC slapped them with to know that any further intrusion into their cozy, safe, soft, comfortable world, Nigerian civil servants would crack.

Even now some of them are actually cracking up big time. One permanent secretary, just retired, is said to be gearing up to take the government to court to seek the interpretation of the word ‘Permanent’; another retired director locked up his office and refused to release the keys. That’s what happens when you stay too long in the shade; a few minutes out in the sun and you are as helpless as a fish out of water. For those who have missed the news, here is a brief recap:

Recently the HOCS issued a circular which prescribes two terms of four-year each for permanent secretaries; and an eight-year tenure for directors. If along the way you hit the age of 60, then there goes your tenure. While they were squirming in their seats, praying that they would be overlooked, the HOCS released another which includes directors and other civil servants heading government departments and agencies. That effectively completed what is possibly the most fundamental reform that the civil service had witnessed in recent years.

For the civil servant himself that was a Tsunami of sorts. Overnight the ordered, predictable, routine life of the civil servant was turned upside down; from now on it was no longer enough to go back to your file and turn back the clock, so to speak, by changing your DoB (date of birth) so that you can remain a director or a permanent secretary forever; or until your teenage son comes of age enough to take over from you. Whether you are serving or sapping the country, there is now a term limit (there always has been, but it was full of loopholes) attached to your swivel chair.

But just as this unexpected ‘dislocation’ created pandemonium overnight, it also created an unprecedented and equally unexpected opportunity which opened doors that many people had thought were shut for ever. Suddenly many people who had been stagnant on one spot for over a decade began to see the prospect of moving vertically.

At first some of the more clever civil servants that were negatively (from their point of view) affected by the reform had tried to sell the worn out idea that the reform was targeted at a particular part of the country, namely the North. At least one prominent personality had attempted to sell that dummy to me two weeks before it was publicly announced.

The fellow had said to me over the phone that the federal government was working towards introducing a policy that “would weed out the North from the civil service; you know that is all we are left with and now the HOCS in conjunction with a well known politician from the South is set to neutralize the region in that sphere also”.

Ten years ago, I would have swallowed that rubbish in its entirety; and would have raised alarm, writing articles and calling Oronsaye names. But that was then; after having been taken in by such myopic self-serving sentiments in the past, now I didn’t even need to think before I could spot the gaping holes in that argument. First, I wasn’t even aware that the so called ‘North’ the fellow was referring to have any strength in the civil service. Second, if such a policy can sail through under a president and a secretary to the government of the federation (SGF) that are both from the same North, then I would be wasting my time to think I could influence it either way.

What was more likely, I concluded, was that the usual had happened: mercenaries who have ridden on the back of ethnic sentiments are about to lose their privileges and now remember that they were from a certain place called the ‘North’. Sure enough this turned out to be the view of most people even within the civil service. Many of them say that in picking replacements for those that got caught up in this (un) timely intervention, the federal character principle would be used so that no state loses out. If the North is short-changed, then it is not Oronsaye and the mysterious politician from the South that we should hold responsible, but the ministers, federal legislators and the all mighty governors of the region that we should hold responsible.

Equally laughable is the claim by some that the reform is an infringement on the rights of the affected ‘over-stayed’ directors and civil servants. An employer has the right to determine the quality of the employee he needs, and for how long he wishes to keep him or her; and the employer has the option to accept or quit. In any case as it is so often pointed out, exactly how many Nigerians enjoy the perquisites of the civil service? At the federal level it is less than one per cent of the total population; so how are the rest of us able to get by? And if the civil service is so effective, who has been helping our leaders in dishing out to us the terrible governance we’ve been having over the years?

If this reform has the same objective as the one started by the Obasanjo regime, which according Malam Nasir el-Rufai, the erstwhile chairman of the committee at the time, was to create a smaller, slimmer and more effective civil service, then Oronsaye should carry on. There is evidence that at least one government agency has started benefitting from this reform.

A former senior prison service officer told me that the Customs, Immigration and Prison Pension Office (CIPPO) is one of the first to benefit from this reform. According to this source who is a pensioner, in the aftermath of the reform, CIPPO got a new director who is below 50 years; in just three months he has introduced changes that were thought impossible under the former director that had just retired due to old age. For instance, the new man, who was actually about to start a PhD. Programme now works until late into the evening; he has just sent the first batch of 50 staff for a computer training, the first time in over a decade.; he introduced special overtime allowances to motivate the staff and pays salaries and pensioners by the 25th of the month.

That is more like it. We certainly need a more vigorous, pragmatic, dynamic and younger civil service. That is a very necessary requirement for the actualization of our developmental dreams. Knowledgeable people say that part of the obstacles to solving our protracted power problem is actually a civil service that is unwilling to commit itself to that goal. That may be unkind, but to a lot of us the civil service exists more in the abstract, a phrase in the English language; at best a faceless, dour, boring, time-wasting, unhelpful, pilfering personality that is highly allergic to adventure.

But in reality we all know that the civil servant deserves more charitable characterization. There are some very superb brains among them; I met one who produced a work plan in 24 hours that looked like he had taken 24 weeks to put it together. That is why Mr. Oronsaye must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water.