An OPEN LETTER to Dr Joe Abah
Ask not what your country can give you, Ask what you can give your country ~ JFK
First and foremost, I think it very important to publicly congratulate you again for your time as Director General of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms in Nigeria. It will be on record that you served wholeheartedly and gave an example of what public service should be.
You understood what it meant to show examples both to the people you led in your team and we the people that you served, choosing to bring about reform where we already thought were irredeemable agencies. You showed that it could be done.
If the JFK quote i put up earlier was read a few years ago when you assumed the DG role, and an appraisal was taken today, you’ll be able to boldly say you have given to your country much more than a lot of us other Nigerians will be able to. But your job is not yet done, sir.
The task of giving to your country is not one that ever has an ending, especially if you have something of value to continually give.
So with purpose, I chose to write you this open letter with your reform question on Twitter in mind. You had summarily asked
What is evident is that there is a dire need for civil service reform in Nigeria. Even with a very impressionable leader in an agency backed with support and political will in the midst of an urgent critical societal need like it was the case in NAFDAC under Dora Akunyili, it is still very difficult to sustain the progresses made by these leaders.
Productivity is a very serious issue and even more threatening in sectors like education where the impact is felt not on how fast businessmen can register their businesses or how efficient someone’s child can get a drivers license at 18, but a rebounding effect on the quality of the average young Nigerian in 10, 15 years to come.
Chief Bisi Akande, former governor of Osun State once chose to retrench teachers who were moribund in Osun State and lost his second bid for governor as a result. Of course, the teachers were not doing anything, but they didn’t find any reason why they had to be sacked.
So where does this new ‘shoprite’ CEO go from here?
My answer — The Foundation.
The laws governing a society determine by and large every other component of that society. Once majority of us Nigerians can understand this and can channel our energies towards this, we will be closer to a better Nigeria sooner than we think.
There’s no progress without reform. We cannot move forward as a country without bold choices especially with the same attitude and the same quality of people in the civil service.This is why I am of the opinion that any candidate running for election that presents a manifesto that does not highlight how to get the workforce to make the ideas become reality, is another ignorant politician or another con-artist.
We need to get back to the laws that make up our land. Laws are written for men and for society and once they outlive their use, it is foolhardy to continue to keep those laws as sacred and sacrosanct. Even the ten commandments of scripture were reduced to two after it became obvious that the letter killeth and there was the need for a new testament.
With the current laws of our land, we are headed nowhere and no matter how hardworking our shoprite CEO is, he can only deliver within a limit. Another reality check will be to even ask private sector employers what their situation is when looking to hire competent staff. If private sector employers are finding it difficult to locate competent Nigerians amidst the pool of graduates that we have with the pay and the environment, what should we say of the quality of the civil service workforce where competency is not even sought?
I have since learnt that, to radically change a society like ours from our normalized abnormalities to the proper norms of an ideal society, our laws are important. Without them, we will be running in circles. I wrote a case scenario here for the Technology Ecosystem with this point in view.
Our problems are not unique sir. Until the assassination of President James Garfield in 1828 that the issue of civil service reform in the united states became an urgent matter. It was a system that was called, ‘the spoils system’ that was established, giving way to nepotism, corruption and party faithfuls.
The Pendleton Act of 1833, 184 years ago, that brought about a reform of the civil service in the USA and it was just 10% of appointments that were classified under the act. Those appointments were going to be based entirely on merit. By 1919, the appointments classified under this Act had reached 90%. When congress noted in 1912 that Presidents could still intefere with the firing of the Classified Staff, it passed another law, the Lloyd-Lafollette Act of 1912. When in the 1970s the congress noted another issue, they passed another reform act that radically restructured the civil service framework.
So Dr. Joe Abah, our shoprite CEO, should push for election as a member of the board, after which he will through lobbying and politicking mobilize enough support for a motion in the board meeting, and raise the motion for the conditions of the workforce be reviewed and passed, not as a recommendation but as a law, and then proceed to leverage on that law to achieve his deliverables.
It was Abraham Lincoln that once supposedly said, if you give me 6 hours to cut down a tree, I’ll spend the first 4 sharpening the axe. Reviewing our laws is the sharpening of the axe and that is what we should first and foremost concentrate on.
Regards,
JFK.
p.s just in case my original message was not clear because of my approach to make it subtle, it is this — Please consider running for parliament. I know a party that will be glad to welcome you wholeheartedly and where you won’t have to rigmarole through as much dirt as you would find in those other ones.
:)
