The Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission ( FCSC) , Prof. Tunji Olaopa, has listed some ways retired permanent secretaries can contribute to governance and national development.
Olaopa, a retired permanent secretary, spoke on Wednesday when top officials of the Council of Retired Federal Permanent Secretaries (CORFEPS) paid him a courtesy visit in his office in Abuja.
The courtesy call was led by Mr Mahmud Yayale Ahmed, who was at different times the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, and Minister of Defence.
According to Olaopa, CORFEPS stands tall as the apex body of veterans of Nigeria’s bureaucracy. He said that he was proud of its continued efforts to deploy its “immense value as a reservoir of professional knowledge, experience and clout to championing significant conversations and interventions that are channelled at shaping the trajectory of our profession of public administration and the future of the civil service in Nigeria.
“However, I make bold to say that, with the game-changing benefits of the renewed hope development strides of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR that is unfolding with significant transformational impacts and potential, many more frontiers-shifting areas that CORFEPS will necessarily be required to take on have built up. I see a veritable eco-system in which CORFEPS can position itself to deploy multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary expertise and network as part of the existing and overloaded complex network of national think tanks, to become a sounding board for a second opinion to governments on development policy management and public administration reforms.”
Consequently, Olaopa urged that state-level Associations of retired Heads of Service and Permanent Secretaries be brought into CORFEPS.
He, however, lamented that the public administration practice lacked a professional gatekeeping body since the National Association for Public Administration and Management (NAPAM) went moribund, a challenge to which CORFEPS should provide a lead, with the HCSF and Chairman, FCSC serving as catalysts. I advise that we solicit and source technical assistance of our numerous international and national development partners and foundations to kick-start this process. If we can hire a sound expert Technical Lead to head the secretariat soon as the association comes upstream, it will sustain itself by leveraging the typical templates of similar bodies and its flagship activities.”
Olaopa praised CORFEPS, led by Ajiyan Katagum, whom he described as his indefatigable mentor and boss.
He welcomed the Amazon of the Federal Civil Service and the female Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Engr. Ebele Okeke, CFR, among others, who were seniors, former bosses or colleagues.
He said he felt humbled that he belonged to this body which has as members many living legends, who are too numerous to mention at a sitting.
He paid special tributes to some members of this august delegation, “whom I know so well both at official and personal levels, and many of whom have contributed immensely to the annals of the civil service unfolding in their time in Nigeria and have impacted my career immeasurably.”
Lauding the great impact of Mahmud Yayale Ahmed, CFR, Olaopa said: “When a personality like Mahmud Yayale Ahmed, CFR, leads a delegation to pay a visit to the Federal Civil Service Commission to discuss how we might take the fortune of our great country to higher heights, and at once, to honour his mentee, then such a visit is far more than just a courtesy visit. Like I did remark in a syndicated tribute to him, such visitation generates reflections and discourses, and activates possibilities. I make bold to say that I owe the most significant portion of my career as a federal officer to his mentorship in the trenches of reform strategy designs and implementation and their change management, first in the Federal Ministry of Education, where he was my Permanent Secretary from 1999 to 2001, and as the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation boss from 2002 to 2007.
- Yayale Ahmed’s legacy to Nigeria’s administrative history and institutional reform was not merely episodic in a manner of speaking, but presents a major paradigm shift in administrative reform praxis and change management in Nigeria.
Up unto 2001, Nigeria had a history of administrative reforms in the public service defined by 10-yearly episodic reviews by ad hoc Commissions, study groups, panels or review Committees. In the heat of the implementation of the 2nd phase of the Allison Ayida reform of 1995, what the Olusegun Obasanjo cabinet discussion at FEC on 15th of June, 2001 provoked was a bitter lamentation by ministers who did not see the impact of the Ayida reform nor the reforms before it. They expressed deep-seated dissatisfaction with a constraining administrative system that arguably stood in the way of optimal performance of government through their efforts as the key players in government to impact the development process through the policy formulation and implementation processes.
“The Federal Executive Council on that historic day was about taking the decision to set up another high-powered panel when M. Yayale Ahmed made history by rising up to the challenge with a statement. Giving his sense of what the challenge was, he explained that it has a lot to do with the politics that our nation played and still plays with public institutions, circumscription of merit, distortion of competency-based human resource practices, and the politicisation of the civil service governance and wanton indifference to invest in its capacitation. He demanded that the civil service be given, for the first time, the opportunity to diagnose its problem, and to deliver a reform strategy which the government can then consider and sign on to for implementation in due season. This ran at the time against the reigning theory that challenges the capacity of the civil service to reform itself
“I am proud to be a significant member of the technical team that Yayale Ahmed assembled as head of the technical secretariat under the supervision of a Permanent Secretary. Yayale will go on to courageously lead the articulation of a profound reform methodology that jumpstarted a new era of administrative reform, one that became the reference point all across the African continent
The new reform paradigm delivered the defining National Strategy for Public Service Reforms (NSPSR) and the establishment of the Bureau for Public Service Reforms (BPSR) which provided the platform for the pilot implementation of a national strategy which institutionalised administrative reform change management as a permanent feature of Federal Civil Service governance within a continuous learning and incremental improvement reform methodology that would later become global best practice.”
He praised Engr. Ebele Okeke, CFR, who is the incumbent 1st Vice Chairman of CORFEPS and the first female Head of the Civil Service of the Federation who has many firsts to her name and achievements as well as the successive HCSF would later build on the new reform paradigm, with the 4th pillar on the Civil Service Administrative Reform currently expanded into what today is tagged the Federal Civil Service Strategy and Implementation Plan (FCSSIP) being implemented by the OHCSF
He also praised Mr. Akin Arikawe, OON and Dr. Goke Adegoroye, OON
Mr. Akin Arikawe, 2nd Vice Chairman of CORFEPS, who “remains in my memory as one of the very last chips of the old block of core professional economists of note in the federal service. He would later pioneer the Debt Management Office so creditably and professionally. Dr. Goke Adegoroye, the pioneer DG, BPSR, gave an irreducible outstanding account of himself as a significant contributor to the administrative reform unfolding in Nigeria. He remains my egbon and old boss since our time together in pioneering the BPSR. I have credited him in many of my published works for helping my transition from wanton reliance on undiluted technical expertise in driving reforms to placing significant value on the politics of reform, and that was indescribably significant.”
He noted that the FCSC has, since its inauguration and its initial rapid diagnostic assessments, been implementing its repositioning plan.
“The first leg of the implementation is to restore the image of the Commission as the integrity face of the public administration practice in Nigeria. We made our first statement regarding this loud and clear, with the 2024 Directorate level promotion exercise, that the era of ‘cash and carry’ promotion and recruitment exercises will forthwith receive zero tolerance by this 10th Commission
We have also commenced extensive computerisation and digitisation of the FCSC operations and processes.
“Consequently, the ongoing recruitment exercise went through our recruitment portal, while entry-level assessments and the 2025 Promotion Exercise will be conducted via computer-based tests (CBT). We are keying into the reform drive to professionalise the human resource function in the federal service to professionalise the secretariat of the Commission in due course. Our vision is to reengineer the entire architecture of the Commission and upgrade its workforce so in the medium term it could become a centre of excellence nodal point for HRM problem-solving for the FGN.
“There are a whole range of subsisting service systemic problems occasioned by the embargo on recruitment that has denied the service of system rejuvenation through regular recruitments conducted through transparent innovative methodologies. There are question marks regarding the implementation of the merit system and its application in the implementation of the federal character policy, which requires significant rethinking and reprofiling.
“There are outstanding reform issues with stagnation and promotional blocks that deny officers professional fulfilment in the career service. This being a symptom of a breakdown of manpower forecasting and succession planning as we know it just as there are issues around abuse of delegated HRM powers to MDAs that challenge the FCSC to beef up its oversight responsibilities and internal control mechanisms. The distortionary annual performance evaluation report (APER) has yet to give way to give vent to the new performance management system that the civil service is renewing the drive to institutionalise. All of these are being carefully packaged into what will soon debut as the 5-year strategic plan of the Commission. And at the National Council for Civil Service Commissions in Nigeria, which held at Katsina, we are already connecting states’ CSCs to this transformation journey.
“Through AAPSCOMMS on which Nigeria currently serves as Vice President (West Africa), we are also reconnecting with the regional community of practice and global knowledge networks of public administration to enable sharing and learning and sustained peer review. I can go on and on, but let me conclude that when the implementation of the revised FCSC Repositioning Plan and Strategic Plan comes on-stream, there will be room for the participation of members of the CORFEPS as a body and at individual levels. Once again, it is with great pleasure and a sense of purpose and humility that I welcome this esteemed delegation.”
Earlier, Yayale Ahmed said that they were were at the commission to celebrate Olaopa’s appointment which he got on merit. He described Olaopa as a hard worker and an unapologetic reformist . He said that Olaopa was central to former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s public service reform.