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PROBLEMS OF NIGERIA PUBLIC SERVICES

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1      Background of the Study

Civil service is a vital instrument to the survival of any governmental setting and indeed service delivery. The effectiveness and productivity of any government to a larger extends, depends on the efficiency of the civil service. As the administrative and technical support to the governing apparatus, the civil service remains the only viable mechanism for policy initiation or formulation, policy advice and policy implementation.

The performance of the public service towards national development is no doubt the most tasking challenges that the government of Nigeria is facing today. The Public Service reflects the state of the nation and no nation has been able to advance beyond its Public Service. Studies have shown that no nation can attain sustainable development for the enhancement of the living standard of the people without a properly organized public service to implement government policies. Public services are seen as so important that for moral reasons, their universal provision should be guaranteed. Nigeria is an endowed nation with material and human resources enough to drive her to socio-political and economic development. With a population of over 180 million hard working and very resilient Nigerians, a land mass of nearly one million square kilometers that hold great potentials for all forms of agriculture, the 7th largest producer of crude oil, the world’s 5th largest proven natural gas reserve and a plethora of solid minerals, Nigeria possess (in potentials) what it takes to be among the world’s most prosperous nations (Achimugu, Stephen and Aliyu, 2013). These potentials and endowment notwithstanding, about 70% of its citizens today live on less than US $ 1 per day as against 15% in 1960 (Achimugu, 2010). Indeed, this will be better understood within the knowledge that the country has earned well over US $300 billion in the last three decades from crude oil alone (Wiwa, 2000). Nigeria Health Review (2007) asserted that of all Nigeria’s power generation potentials, only 40% of its citizenry have access to electric power supply, which has never been stable, thereby denying majority of its citizenry electrical supply. This led the World Bank (2005) to described Nigeria as a paradox. The San Francisco Chronicle (2007) in giving a clear picture of this Nigerian paradox, posited that ‘’Nigeria is a rich nation floating on oil wealth but almost none of it flows to the people’’ For the public service to perform effectively, it operates under some core values such as integrity, meritocracy, discipline, professionalism, patriotism, impartiality and secrecy of government information, except where the information divulged conforms to the Freedom of Information Act. However, for strict compliance to the above core values in the public service, Max Weber in 1947 postulated the rule of “Bureaucracy” which must be adhered by the public service, and this gave birth to the existence of the General Order which sets out the rules and regulations guiding the activities of the public servants in Nigeria. Nevertheless in Nigeria, there is a gross breach of the above standing Bureaucratic rules by the public servants causing poor performance in the public service. Giving the complexity of the situation where Nigerians are suffering in the midst of many, several questions have been raised on why the public service has thrown away the core values of the public service, neglecting the Bureaucratic rules of the public service, and has not been able to perform effectively towards meeting the needs of the Nigeria citizens? In attempting to find an answer to the above question, many scholars and public stakeholders have argued that the public service has been bedeviled with lots of unfavourable environmental factors such as corruption, favouratism, nepotism, constant political interference and other primordial factors such as geographical, ethnic, cultural and religious affiliation with its constitutional consequence of federal character principle or quota system. The inference of the above answer is that the efficiency of the public service is a function of its environment. The ability of the public service to achieve the goal of any nation strongly depends on the ecology under which it operates. The implication of this is that public service can neither be separated from, nor superior to, the environment in which it finds itself and so its environment continually impacts either positively or negatively on it operations. Nigeria has great potentials which her public service should unlock in the quest to improve her service delivery. To achieve this however, the society under which the public service operates must be functional and conducive for effective performance of the public service. However, the recent experience in the Nigeria public service has suggested that the environment under which it operates is far from being functional and conducive; and this is the main crux of this research work.

In the light of the above, the study seeks to examine the problems that have engulfed the Nigeria public service, with laudable abandonment of the core value of the public service and bureaucratic rules causing it to mal function in the vein of service delivery to the Nigeria citizens, with a view of recommending solutions towards conquering these cancerous factors that has affected the public service adversely.

1.2      Statement of the Problem

One of the greatest problems of Nigerian public service is the prevailing incidence of corruption. Corruption therefore has become a persistent cancerous phenomenon which bedevils Nigeria public sector. Misappropriation, bribery, embezzlement, nepotism, and money laundering by public officials have permeated the fabric of the society. Any attempt to understand the tragedy of development and the challenges to democracy in most developing countries (Nigeria inclusive), must come to grips with the problem of corruption and stupendous wastage of scarce resources.

In addition, there is a seeming lack of efficiency and commitment on the part of Civil Servants, evident in huge waste of resources in government programs, low quality projects resulting from poor implementation processes and a vicious cycle of nonchalance to work. A lack of awareness of the need and importance of quality in service offered to society pervades this sector of the economy. These problems have led to a continual decreasing trend in the general performance of the Nigerian Civil Service. It is however interesting to note at this point, that the large percentage of the working class of society who expect these services form the bulk of employees of the Nigerian Civil Service.

Moreover, there is a lack of literature with focus on the problems of the Nigerian public service. Hence, this study.

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