The Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission, Prof. Tunji Olaopa, on  Tuesday urged public administrators to brace for the challenges of future civil service.

Olaopa spoke in Katsina at the 43th Annual Conference of the Council of the Civil Service Commissions of the Federation. The conference holds from Monday to Thursday .

According to Olaopa, it is only through a deliberate preparation by public administrators that they can guarantee the relevance of civil service and contribute effectively to their governments.

Prof. Tunji Olaopa  delivering  the keynote address during the conference in Katsina on Tuesday.

Olaopa was hopeful that his keynote address would lead to the conference’s stakeholders leaving with a “Katsina Declaration that would serve as their commitment to rethink and deepen our gatekeeping responsibility to transform our Commissions as game-changers committed to a renewed governance partnership with our governments through the reinstitution of competency-based meritocratic practices in the bid to reprofessionalise the civil service in Nigeria so they are capability-ready, performance-oriented, digitally-enabled, accountable and value-driven institutions, poised to create in the shortest time possible, a new generation of public managers with redoubled commitment to Nigeria’s transformation journey.”

Tasking public administrators such as leaders of civil service commissions on how well they have prepared for the challenges of the future, he asked : “How far are we taking advantage of technology to modernise our Commissions’ operations and the discharge of their core functions? And if the digital penetrations in our operations have not been significant, is that not a measure of our non-commitment to purpose, given the speed at which technology and artificial intelligence (AI) are reshaping the world of work, especially as became more pronounced and defining after Covid-19 pandemic and its new normal?

Prof. Tunji Olaopa and other participants at the conference.

Prof. Tunji Olaopa ( left) and the Chairman, Civil Service Commission, Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, Emeka Eze at the conference.

Dr Tukur Bello Ingawa , the immediate predecessor of Prof. Tunji Olaopa giving his goodwill message during the conference in Katsina.

“How are we preparing, intellectually, and for all practical purposes, our civil services’ institutional capability readiness (from the angle of the Commissions) to contend with the work culture and associated sociology that the Millennial, the Gen Z and Gen Alpha will bring to the civil service world of work as it is already manifesting presently, especially given the inclinations and associated standard deviations, that will sure be disruptive to the civil service in a paradigm shifting proportion?

“In other words, how fast are we catching up, even if only at the level of knowledge formation and strategic anticipation, to prepare our civil services to embrace such practices as the flexible employment polices and contracts, and related new HR inescapable new methods?

“Overall, how far are we creating learning events and conversations which prepare us to confront the questions with regard to the changes we need to implement in our different Commissions in order to restore our governments as employers of choice
while at once insulating our civil services from entry of rogues intent on taking advantage of systems’ many weaknesses to continue to perpetuate
criminality and the worst forms of bureaucratic corruption?”

Earlier, Olaopa asked public administrators if they were keeping faith with the founding mandate and first principle as CSCs ( Civil Service Commissions) in Nigeria going by the conceptualisation of CSC at birth in 1855 in Britain.

“In other words, if we return to the origin of the concept of the CSC as invented by the Northcote-Trevelyan Report of 1854, are the CSCs in Nigeria on track in every sense particular?” he asked.

Recounting the evolution of the concept of the civil servant and the civil service commission, Olaopa recalled that before the birth of the CSC in 1855, appointments and recruitments to public institutions not just in Britain, but all around the then world, were done through a system of patronage that was ridden by politics and therefore lacking objective and merit-based parameters.

“After what historians tagged the era of revolutions in world history therefore, one that witnessed the British, French, American revolutions, among others, the debate that birthed a movement ensued, on the need to separate politics from administration. This would later lead to a fundamental change in the status of the civil servant as she was known at the time.

“The civil servant then started to be seen as a servant of the state and no longer a servant to kings and emperors. In 1782 therefore, the British implemented some reforms to effectively deal with the system of royal patronage to decrease the influence of the king on governance. It was this wave that culminated in the creation of the CSC which was conceived as an independent board that will ensure that entry into the public service would be entirely on the basis of merit “, he said.

He noted that in institutionalising the merit system, the British did not end it at the level of the CSC’s operations, it elevated her elite institutions like Oxford and Cambridge, and their degrees as well as the politics, philosophy and economics ( PPE) master’s degree programme, as preferred qualification for preparing students for a career in the public service .

The French took the education and training for public education of public administrators further by establishing (as Nigeria did with ASCON much later) Ecole National d’ Administration to provide the state with technical specialists in general administration and the training of senior civil servants.

“It was this evolving model merit-based career management model for civil servants that Max Weber researched in his benchmarking landmark study of the Prussian military governance system to conceptualise the idea of a public servant as a bureaucrat in his bureaucratic managerial model that shaped the face of public administration in a paradigmatic proportion for ever, one that translates public administration into an instrument of public power, determined not according to the whims of the power-that-be, but by a legal-rational authority structure. Weber went on to conceive the bureaucracy as a legal-rational authority that is defined by specific set of rules and procedures; and such values as neutrality, hierarchical organisation, loyalty, being a-political in the administration of government policies, among others”, he said.

For Olaopa, the singular objective of the British therefore, in conceiving the CSC concept was to create a critical mass of officials who would be distinguished in character and in learning as to provide a top flight support for executive policy makers, “the fundamental concern of the founding fathers being the need to gate-keep the public service’s entry point in such a way that will protect and preserve the nobility of the public service as a calling.”

Wondering if public administrators have been able to ensure integrity and meritocracy in their operations, Olaopa asked: “If we return to first principle and therefore to basic fundamentals, what is, in the Nigerian sense, the conception of the merit system in recruitment? And in implementing our idea of what the merit system is, have we not returned the service to its pre-1855 status of virtual politicisation of career management in the service if we go by the extent to which recruitments are fraught with nepotism, patronage and corruption due either to the helplessness of the CSCs or our complicity to continue to load the service with half-baked graduates and corrupt actions that often smack of deadened conscience and disregard for the sacredness of our calling as service to humanity and to God?
Two, what really is the philosophical underpinning, strategies and guidelines that we deploy in enforcing merit, while at once implementing the federal character policy as an instrument of diversity management in every manner meritocratic?

“Three, what contingent career and talent management strategies are in place to grow new entrants into service, so they will in time become well-bred professionals, more so, in view of the imperative demand of the new knowledge age and dynamics that we are struggling to navigate?

“Four, if we have been able to at least sustain the inherited practices of the good old days of service in Nigeria, why are our MDAs and public governance in Nigeria manifesting palpable and almost incurable capacity deficits and moral decadence?

“Five, if however we are honest enough to admit that, contrary to what the service used to be, there is a breakdown of competency-based HR practices, what should be our reform roadmaps and change management strategies, if indeed we are committed to reviving and transforming our cherished profession of public administration as a generational calling in Nigeria?”

Olaopa also spoke about what he identified as a seeming adversarial relationship between the offices of the HOS’ and the CSCs. He said that the two offices were designed to complement each other as partners in progress.