A country is governed by professionals who make up the civil service, representing governance that has been built to protect and serve the populace in their various capacities. So, what does it mean to be a Public Servant in the civil service?
This ultimately means you have taken an underlining oath to serve the public within your capacity and bridge the gap between the public and higher offices to ensure that the needs of the people are being acknowledged, represented in office, and implemented in various communities.
Unfortunately, this is not the case in Nigeria. As a country, we have come so far in embracing global practices and have been more receptive to the implementation of technology at the core of various industries. However, the current structure of the Civil Service represents a stone aged institution where professionals have spent more than two decades in service without adding value to the development of the country’s infrastructure, implementing policies that promote inclusion, or creating public-private initiatives that bridge the socio-economic gaps among its people.
There are so many holes in the Civil Service structure starting from its organisational structure to basic Standard Operational Procedures. We are still paper pushing, manual filing, and issuing paper-based authorisations in a world that is undergoing rapid digital transformation. Is this a representation of Nigeria? No, it is not! It is actually a representation of the employees that currently occupy key positions. Without sounding ageist, the average age of a Civil Servant is between 40 – 55 and has spent at least 15 years in office. This means that the generation that currently dominates the public sector sphere is rigid in their thought-process, leadership, and management style, which means that their resistance to radical change is very likely and their difficulty to adapt and embrace a new working culture is inevitable.
Many current employees joined the Civil Service at a time where educational advancement was limited and all that was required to deem them eligible for employment were the basic literacy requirements. Now fast forward a few decades later, and we are in a time where the standards of the basic requirements have dramatically changed, and the country has raised the bar academically, with emotional and business intelligence in tow.
Looking at the current professional disposition of the average civil servant, you will find that there is a serious lack of continuous professional development from a self-development perspective, and a mediocre approach by government entities to empower such initiatives internally. This is mainly because of the mismanagement of resources and displaced priorities. Every year, there are multi-million-naira budgets being signed off, for various initiatives including training and development but where are these resources going to?
The generation that currently dominates the public sector sphere is rigid in their thought-process, leadership, and management style, which means that their resistance to radical change is very likely
During the time of estacodes for travelling abroad, funding that was set aside for the educating and strengthening of the civil service’s efficiency and operational excellence, was being used to fund leisure as opposed to learning. After estacodes were scrapped and training were conducted in-country or pan-African at the most, nothing changed. The effect of this neglect is becoming more apparent as the systems are failing to protect the people they swore to serve. The infrastructure that was designed to serve the public is deteriorating at a rapid pace, and the people have lost complete faith in its ability to govern effectively.
From another perspective, there are employees who feel oppressed within this administration and have tried to seek green pastures outside of the public sector. In the attempt to do this, a large portion of professionals usually find themselves in either of the two categories; either you are hired because your network is attractive to a company who wants to leverage it; or you find it difficult to secure a job because they feel your professional competence is limited or that you would have developed a level of complacency because of the environment you’re coming from.
There is an underlying ideology from the private sector, or shall I refer to it as the “unspoken word on the street” that when you have spent a substantial amount of your career in the public sector, you would find it hard to adapt to the fast pace and structure of the private sector. From a professional development perspective, the people who are reaping the benefits of the Public Sector are those who are affiliated but not associated.
Let me break it down!
Affiliated professionals are those I refer to as “floating consultants”, who have worked with different government agencies at different levels, in various capacities. You get the benefit of executing projects with limited bottlenecks as an affiliate, but you work at the independent pace of a privately led organisation. However, being an associate is just the same as being an employee. You are associated with a ministry where you have dedicated a substantial part of your career to, and you cannot talk about achievements or your career journey without mentioning the department and ministry in which you worked in to get to where you are today.
So, what is the way forward? Cutting the salaries of civil servants? No! The way forward is an organisational sweep -, a complete demolition to assess, rebuild, and rebrand. There are so many employees that fill the seats and no longer serve the purpose of the office they assume so the only way to identify the cracks, whither out the weeds and relay the foundation is to have an “organisational sweep.”
The first step would be a competency assessment using international Key Performance Indicators to be implemented at all levels. This will initiate the foundation in which the new administration will be built on, identify the areas of development, and fill the gaps with confident change-makers who have the attributes of thought-leadership.
The new administration needs people who are not afraid of adopting a “start-up” mindset, to rebuild a structure from the bottom-up and widen the mouth of bottlenecks to implement seamless flowcharts that have productivity and accountability as a core objective.
The journey to real transformation is a long road, with many potholes and obstacles to overcome. To establish sustainable change, we need to embrace methodologies that are designed to evolve and empower the workforce to work with productivity and accountability. The intention to commit to transformational change one-step at a time is the beginning of establishing a government that serves the people.
Oyelade is an International Recruitment Business Leader, EMEA Talent Acquisition Director, Employability Specialist and Author
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