ADEWALE ADEOYE
I read a circular from the Lagos Head of Service, Mr. Hakeem Muri-Okunola, instructing that State Commissioners and Special Advisers ‘MUST’ pick their Special Assistants from the State Civil Service. He argued that the move was necessary ‘so as not to increase the wage bill of the government’. Lagos has one of the best civil service tradition in Nigeria dating back to the colonial era. This agelong culture must be preserved. There have been many policies in Lagos copied by many states in Nigeria partly due to the professional heritage of the state civil service.
With all respect to the Head of Service, this directive is absolutely wrong. It is even a dangerous directive that will negatively impact on professionalism, effectiveness, discipline and good conscience in the Civil Service.
In the first place, Political Appointments should not be muddled up with civil service. While the Political actors are seasonal and are appointed based on the whims of the political party in power, the Civil Service is a career, driven by constant training, non-partisanship to political affairs and a commitment to professional duties in line with the Civil Service rule. While the Civil Service is a constant, the political appointments is in a state of constant flux.
The Civil Service runs the State technically, while the Political class runs the state given the policies of their party preferences.
It is a dangerous instruction asking Political Office holders to co-opt professional civil servants into partisan and often fluid political structures of the state. This step will undermine professionalism, it will polarise the civil service, diminish the culture of promotion based on merit, attack the very bases of merit in civil service orderliness and corrupt the ethics of the civil service and its code of conduct. The directive will politicise the civil service.
The Head of Service says it will reduce wage bill, what about the argument that picking Special Assistants from their wards will also create jobs for the people?
It will subordinate the selected Special Assistants picked form the Civil Service to the disciple and nocturnal lifestyle of political lords instead of administrative rules and discipline expected to develop and strengthen the civil service tradition.
For instance, if the Commissioner for Health or Education picks his Special Assistant from the civil service, for the period of their service, their loyalty will tilt towards their political principals at the expense of the ordered steps in the civil service or at best, loyalty will be divided between politics and professionalism.
There are several other pitfalls. The new directive in the first place has no bearing with the wage bill of the state. Political Appointees usually pay their Special Assistants from their monthly salaries.
Where the payment of Special Assistants are mandated in Employment Letters, the appointment of Special Assistants from the Civil Service will only lead to double pay for the Special Assistants picked from the Civil Service. The fact is that the Political Appointees will still pay their SAs apart from their statutory monthly wages.
This will lead to bitter competition among civil servants desperate to serve as Special Assistants.
This will affect professionalism and ethics traditionally associated with the civil service. It will turn the Civil Service into political bazaar. It will also lead to influx of professionals from the civil service into politics.
If the SA of a Commissioner after one year is able to improve his living conditions, while would he or she go back into the civil service, why would he also not seek to contest for election? If an SA to a Commissioner is on his team to the United States, having obtained the US visa, why would he or she come back to Nigeria? How do you measure productivity of a civil servant that spent eight years as SA with a commissioner? How does he attend Civil service trainings during the period? There is also the fact those civil servants who serve as Special Assistants to politically exposed persons may be sacked if the political parties their principals serve lose the election. If they remain I’m service their loyalty will be in doubt.
I urge the State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu to immediately reverse this order to protect the Lagos civil service from the cankerworm of partisan politics and preserve the integrity of the Civil Service Commission, which regulates the employment, promotion of values in the civil service