Public Sector leadership must learn and adopt the modus from the private sector where there is a great demand on individuals to be high performers in order to attain upward mobility in his/her career. There is greater emphasis on Competence over Charisma; Substance over Style; and Results over Rhetoric which augurs well for productivity and sustainability.

CONCLUSION

The key is in achieving equilibrium of right relationship between both spheres. Since the mid-1980s, successive regimes have adopted privatization virtually as the sole direction and design of all government economic policy. The predominant understanding of this view is that the goals of growth and development that we seek are best pursued by unshackling free enterprise and allowing the market to generate these outcomes. It has become a kind of governmental orthodoxy. The mantra of private sector-led growth has been articulated in such a way as to suggest that the public sector is irrelevant to the quest for national prosperity.

By devaluing the public sector in the name of promoting private sector-driven growth, we have failed to realize that a buoyant economy requires not only an exuberant private sector but also a virile public sector. A public service alive to its regulatory responsibilities and healthy enough to modulate the tension between the market and society is absolutely vital. Without it, primitive capitalism and unhinged profiteering will take root. Corporations and service providers, unencumbered by regulatory oversight and the necessary pressure to comply with global best practices, will simply fleece their customers. Consumers will not receive value for money because the market is being poorly refereed. In short, where the public sector is certifiably dysfunctional, private sector-led growth will be marked by fraud, graft and corporate malfeasance that are possible because of inadequate policing. If the corruption scandals in the government and in the private sector teach us anything it is that without proper policing and institutional oversight, actors, whether they are in the private sector or public service, will be corrupt and self-aggrandizing. Only a healthy and self-confident public service operating optimally functioning institutions can create a climate in which elites in the private and public realms behave appropriately.

The global financial crisis that plunged the world into recession in 2008 which we touched on earlier has been described in many quarters as a consequence of the devaluation of the public sector in favour of unfettered markets. The markets failed to regulate themselves. Bankers and financial sector operatives saw opportunities for profiteering and duly took bad risks in pursuit of such opportunities. But it was also the failure of several governments to regulate the financial institutions, corporations and credit ratings agencies. All had fallen for the conventional wisdom that markets are inherently self-regulating and that government performing its normal role as the guarantor of public order is a nuisance that impedes markets.

However, when several financial institutions teetered on the brink of bankruptcy and the world faced the reality of an economic depression, it was to the much maligned public service that nations turned. Governments, even those that had preached laissez faire doctrines, rushed to bail out banks that were about to go under. According to the doctrines of free market orthodoxy, the ailing institutions should have been left to go under. But that outcome would have meant unprecedented job losses, severe socio-economic dislocation with the possibility of a wide-ranging destabilization of the social order. Recognizing the perils of permitting such an apocalyptic outcome, western bureaucrats hurriedly dispensed with conventional wisdom and governments acted as they should to protect the society. This is what public service is all about.

The fact is that no matter how private sector-driven we aspire to be, authentic economic growth is impossible without a competent public sector. There are spaces that can only be administered by a functional public service. Not everything can be privatized nor should every area of society be surrendered to the whims and caprices of market forces. Indeed, the calling of public service is to see that the pursuit of profits is submitted to the higher imperatives of the common good. There is no reason why our business interests cannot harmonize an aptitude for profit-making with a high estimation of the common good. This is the idea behind good corporate citizenship – the perception that the business enterprise while a profit-making endeavour cannot sustainably exist solely to make profit. It must take cognizance of the society within which it operates and factor in the common good of that society into its operational ethos. In other words, the business enterprise, insofar as it is constituted by people who are social animals, is itself a social organism operating within a social context. There are social benefits it must consider that are not necessarily captured in the bottom line.

There are clearly strengths native to the private and public sector that we can harness and synthesize to drive national progress. One trend that could assist this process would be to have a more seamless transition of professionals from the private to the public sectors and vice versa at anytime in one’s career as a means to enriching both. Such cross-pollination of personnel would only beneficially impact both sectors. The ideal Nigerian personality would be one that is able to balance the passion, sensitivity and humane nature you gain from public service with the drive and bullishness of the private sector. If we can nurture and train such hybrid personalities, the locomotive of Nigeria’s growth and prosperity would become truly unstoppable.

In Chief Akintola Williams we find such a Nigerian who has given full expression to his talents and pristine character by blessing us with corporations that stand as glowing tributes to the fact that with integrity, excellence, and professionalism, the sky is just the stepping stone, yet he is unrelenting. He has served both the public and private sectors without blemish showing us that indeed the same values of professionalism and integrity commend the diligent to greatness. He has shown us we can win by righteousness; and for all those who see a new Nigeria on the horizon, and are working honestly and passionately to see it come through, the legacy of our living legend, Chief Akintola Williams remains a bulwark of encouragement along our way.

Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for listening.

Former Ekiti State governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi delivered this paper at the 2015 Edition of the Akintola Williams Distinguished Lecture Series Muson Centre, Onikan, Lagos, Nigeria
on Thursday, October 22, 2015

(Footnotes)
1 http://www.corpgov.net/library/corporate-governance-defined/
2 Power and Accountability, Robert A. G. Monks & Nell Minow, 1992
3 Daniel Kadlec, “World Con,” Time, July 8, 2002
4 http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sarbanesoxleyact.asp

5 Rose Umoren, Economic Reforms and Nigeria’s Political Reforms (Spectrum Books 2001)
6 Olusegun Obasanjo, “Banditry in Banks,”Newswatch, May 13, 1991
7 “Cadbury Overstates Accounts by N15 Billion,”Thisday December 13, 2006
8 Owei Lakemfa, “Nigeria is a Leaking Vessel,”Vanguard, February 18, 2009
9 “Back to Square One,”Broad Street Journal, September 22, 2008
10 Ijeoma Nwogwugwu, “Reassessing the Nigerian Financial System III,”Thisday, October 27, 2008
11 http://www.nnpcgroup.com/nnpcbusiness/upstreamventures/oilproduction.aspx
12http://dailytimes.com.ng/article/nigeria-earned-800-billion-oil-revenue-50-years
13 “The Business Scorecard,” The Africa Report, May 2014
14 Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Lecture, Oslo, December 10, 2006., http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2006/yunus-lecture-en.html
15 Nigeria expends $59m on champagne in 2012, Vanguard Newspapers, April 25, 2013
  
16 Rulers.org
17 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_bottom_line
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18 http://www.tradingeconomics.com/nigeria/land-area-sq-km-wb-data.html