News - Anxiety over public service reform report, panel split

[TGD]

 • Fika panel seeks abolition of tenure regime for directors, perm secs

• May submit report today, two years after deliberation

• Vice chairman resigns, Oronsaye declines participation

• Govt to get minority report from three members

AT long last, the Adamu Fika Presidential Committee set up in March 2011 on the review of the reform processes in the nation's public service may submit a report to the Federal Government Monday.

The committee was  set up ostensibly to  review the tenure of top civil servants  but it is the tenure issue  that has become a source of discord , leading to the resignation of the first female permanent secretary  and vice chairman of the committee.

A key recommendation that may stir a controversy in the polity is the one that the tenure regime for directors and permanent secretaries the Yar'Adua administration institutionalised in 2009 be cancelled so that they can remain in office until they are 60 years old or 30 years in service as the service rule originally provides.

A member of the panel who would not like to be named last night said, "yes, the tenure issue divided the committee but there is no big deal there. Government can collect the two reports and study them to guide their decisions. After all, the chairman of the committee also supported a minority report against the Dotun Philips panel under General IBB (former Military President Gen. Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (rtd) in those days when Olu Falae was brought in as Secretary to the Government and Head of Service."

In response to an inquiry in Lagos last week, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Anyim Pius Anyim, confirmed to The Guardian that the almost two-year-old committee set up in controversial circumstances before the Jonathan administration was sworn in would submit its report Monday.

The Guardian's inquiries revealed at the weekend that the committee's two-year-old deliberations were dogged by controversies, altercations and even resignation and removal of some of the key members of the panel.

For, example, the Vice Chairman of the Committee, Mrs. Francesca Yetunde Emmanuel, Nigeria's first female permanent secretary, resigned from the committee recently after what an insider described as a bout of "irreconcilable differences within the committee."

The Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission, Joan Olatoyosi Ayo, was appointed in February last year from the committee. The first controversy that hit the committee occurred when the first Secretary to the panel, Dr. Tunji Olaopa, then a Permanent Secretary in the Office of the Head of Service, was rejected by the Chairman. The then Head of Service, Prof. Oladapo Afolabi, obliged and re-assigned Olaopa, a pioneer member of staff and Deputy Director in the Bureau of Pubic Service Reforms from the committee.

He confirmed the development again to The Guardian last night in response to an inquiry. "Yes, I was re-assigned from the committee as Secretary when the Chairman protested against my nomination..."

Mr. Steve Oronsaye, a member of the committee, quietly stayed away from the committee, although the major achievement of his tenure as Head of Service, tenure determination, was the fundamental target of the advocates of the presidential committee set up on the eve of election that Dr. Goodluck Jonathan was not expected to win, a source in the Presidency noted last night.

The other controversy that dogged the committee set up by the then Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Alhaji Mahmud Yayale Ahmed, was the non-inclusion of the then permanent secretary of the office of the reform agenda of the Federal Government, the Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR), as even a member of the committee.

Mr. Dauda S. Kigbu was the Permanent Secretary of BPSR then, but he was curiously excluded by Ahmed. "Under the public service procedure and protocol for managing committees, the Secretary of the Committee should have been the Permanent Secretary of the Bureau of the Public Service Reforms (BPSR)," was the way a retired permanent secretary put it in a telephone interview last night.

Specifically, it was confirmed last night that Prof. Murtala Balogun, a former Director-General, Administrative Staff College of Nigeria (ASCON), Topo Badagry and the Vice Chairman of the Committee, Mrs. Emmanuel and one other member are the three that are likely to turn in a minority report, having disagreed fundamentally with some issues, including the tenure regime that provides that directors and permanent secretaries have to retire after eight years on the job.

Emmanuel resigned from the committee in mid-November last year "when she could no longer stand ... some committee members, including the chairman, on the issue of tenure determination," an insider told The Guardian last night.

The insider said: "It was unfortunate because Madam Emmanuel worked very hard to achieve results. She was quite diligent and passionate about the expediency of reforming so many other aspects of the service where many permanent secretaries now cannot write good memoranda, let alone letters to superior authorities. It is unconscionable that the tenure issue has beclouded the other salient points in the report..."

Emmanuel, Nigeria's first female permanent secretary, was said to have threatened to go to court if her name was included in the main report. The committee submitted an interim report early 2012.

The original 16-member committee to review the reform processes in the Nigerian pubic service included the following: Alhaji Adamu Fika, Chairman; Mrs. Francesca Yetunde Emmanuel, Vice Chairperson; Mrs. Peres Ayoola; Dr. Aliyu Modibbo; Ama Pepple; Mr. Steve Oronsaye; Alhaji Musa Magaji; Malam Abubakar Gimba; Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed; Mrs. Ammuna Lawal-Ali; and Mr. S.O. Adekunle. Others are Dr. Sam Amadi, Prof. Murtala Balogun, Mr. Paul Ibeku, Deaconess J.O. Ayo and Dr. Tunji Olaopa as Secretary.

One of the significant landmarks of the Yar'Adua administration was tenure determination for directors and permanent secretaries in the federal civil service under Steve Oronsaye as permanent secretaries. The 2009 radical policy swept away nine permanent secretaries of northern extraction. The tenure regime replaced the old system of giving permanent secretaries and directors in the federal civil service unlimited tenure, which gave rise to succession crisis and ageing workforce. At the time of the new deal in 2009, some of the affected permanent secretaries had been on their beats for 14 years and their tenure was going to end by 2017.

Those affected then included Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, Mr Solomom Matankari, Haruna Sanusi, Dr.  Safiya Mohammed, Alhaji N'unma Barau Dambatta, Dr. Abdullahi Aliyu, Alhaji Garba Buwai, Alhaji Bello Matambari, Hajia Ammuna Lawan-Ali.

This was the background to the 2011 Presidential Committee spearheaded by the then SGF, Alhaji Yayale Ahmed. Curiously, some of the victims of the purge including Dr. Baba-Ahmed, Hajia, Ammuna Lawan-Ali were also members of the committee to review the policy that affected them in 2009. That was part of the issues that nurtured the seed of discord in the crisis-ridden committee.

The two-year-old committee was set up throw away the tenure regime for directors and permanent secretaries and the tenure issue for two years was the albatross on the neck of the Chairman (Fika) who had in 2009 taken an advertisement in a newspaper to condemn the policy (tenure regime). The tenure issue led to the resignation of the Vice Chairman, Mrs. Emmanuel, and a minority report to be submitted by a professor who was chief executive of the government-owned Administrative and Staff College of Nigeria (ASCON).

It was not clear at press time if the committee report will be submitted publicly in the office of the SGF, Anyim who confirmed the submission to us in Lagos when he was there last week on a sensitization tour for the nation's centenary.



The Guardian