In an address at the induction of 332 newly appointed directors in the country’s federal civil service, the Head of Civil Service of the Federation (HOCSF) Mrs Esther Didi Walson-Jack, raised the bar for service delivery under the aegis of the ongoing reforms in the federal public service. While she had addressed the new inductees, her message offered take-aways for both President Bola Tinubu and the rest of Nigerians. In urging the inductees to drive the ongoing reforms of the nation’s public service by deploying professionalism, competence, commitment and accountability among other positives as articulated in the Federal Civil Service Strategy Implementation Plan (FCSSIP25), she emphasised the expectation of the entire nation on them to lift the nation’s public service to the next level.
The FCSSIP25 is a four-year (2021-2025) plan of action intended for lifting the federal public service, to provide optimum service delivery to the citizens of the country and was built on the premise of promoting a culture change in the methods and processes of the public service, pursuant to re-inculcating core values of Accountability, Meritocracy, Professionalism, Loyalty and Efficiency (AMPLE). According to her, it was auspicious that the directors were coming on board in the last year of the FCSSIP25, which sets for them the onus of anchoring the dividends of the exercise. Considering that the main queries about the nation’s public service is the erosion of such afore-mentioned core values, the intervention by Walson-Jack which draws attention to these values, easily qualifies as one positive in the nation’s public space that needs to be sustained.
Yet in all its merit, the FCSSIP25 suffers a most debilitating weakness as it remains statutorily confined in ambit to the federal public service terrain, with a rather salutary linkage with the 36 states of the federation as well as the 774 local governments. This is because the country does not operate a monolithic public service structure. Rather, each tier and unit of governance operates its unique public service structure in which the historic and traditional systemic maladies and weaknesses manifest. Hence, while the FCSSIP25 may be making waves at the federal level, it remains at best a stranger to many if not all the states and local governments whereby who may not readily subscribe to its prescriptions without modifications to their unique circumstances.
Given that the FCSSIP25 was launched by the Muhammadu Buhari administration, it offered itself as part of the scenario in which the administration of Bola Tinubu was birthed with a much-vaunted agenda of renewing the hope of Nigerians in the country as redeemable, no matter the challenges facing the citizenry both individually and collectively. It is argued that the message of renewing the hope of Nigerians resonated well with the citizens hence the electoral victory of the president at the 2023 general polls. Hence the Tinubu administration remains duty bound to work with the FCSSIP25 programme.
Expected of President Bola Tinubu is the exploration and resolution of whatever offering the FCSSIP25 has to drive his renewed hope agenda. For while the renewed hope agenda aspires to affect the entire country, the FCSSIP25 remains a baby of the federal public service establishment, it may not therefore provide a uniform impetus for the renewed hope agenda across the country. Hence, against the back-drop of the pivotal role which the nation’s public service establishment offers in the delivery of democracy dividends, President Bola Tinubu needs to foster a harmonisation of a nationwide public service reform regime which will aspire to re-inculcate the core values as Esther Didi Walson-Jack harped on, as such not only touch on the entire quality of governance across the country, but remain the only hope of successful implementation of the renewed hop agenda.
Specifically, the challenge facing the president is how to encourage the adoption and replication of the reform goals of FCSSIP25 in the civil service structures of the respective states, in order to foster a convergence of operational templates as much as such may be feasible in a multi-cultural nation as Nigeria. For even as the interface between the FCSSIP25 and the renewed hope agenda may seem marginal, such a contemplation constitutes a misreading of the situation. For without the convergence of the dispensations of FCSSIP25 as activated beyond the federal public service, and the renewed hope agenda, the president’s efforts may be forlorn.
That is why the interface between the two dispensations are of keen interest to observers of the Tinubu administration. This is especially so with the unmistakable reality of a glaring mismatch between the public sector reforms and the renewed hope agenda. For instance, while the president’s renewed hope agenda aspires to renew the hope of Nigerians in the country, a corresponding upgrade in the service delivery regime of the public service for Nigerians is lagging more so outside the administrative ambit of the federal government.