AIG and the PPP option in the reform of the civil service

When some three weeks ago, the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (OHCSF) signed an MoU with the Africa Initiative for Governance (AIG) in a significant public-private partnership (PPP) geared towards transforming the Nigerian Civil Service, I was filled with the bursting pride of someone who sits and watch some of his reform agitation coming to fruition. The MoU with the AIG is an active part of the 2017-2019 Strategic Plan of the Head of Service of the Federation aimed at transforming the capacity readiness of the public service as an imperative of democratic governance in Nigeria. It has always been a central point of my argument for institutional reform in Nigeria that the public service is the most critical institutional dynamics required to make democracy function for the empowerment of Nigerians. Thus, if the reform of the public service fails, then there cannot be any hope for Nigeria’s democratic experiment. The significance of this laudable move, in the words of the Head of Service herself, is to “create an Efficient, Productive, Incorruptible and Citizen-Centered (EPIC) Civil Service, and thereby, immensely improve the performance of the Service.” All these terms are sound reform concepts which have formed the grundnorm of my reform campaign on behalf of the public service for years.
The public-private partnership constitutes a significant plank in the new managerial revolution in public management. The PPP insight derives from a fundamental rethinking of the traditional role of the state as occupying a commanding height of the economy in a manner that excludes significant non-state actors in vital governance functions and responsibility. In redefining the state as a major actor in democratic governance, the managerial revolution in public administration argues for an expanded governance space that will enable these significant non-state actors certain roles in furthering the governance mandates of the government especially with regards to policy conception and implementation while the state itself retains a regulatory function to oversee policy coordination.
The PPP initiative forms a cogent part of my five-point reform agenda for the public service, made up of (a) creating a new breed of public managers who have the professional wherewithal to (b) handle the transition of the public service into a technology-enabled, performance-oriented world class institution delivering goods and services in a knowledge economy though (c) a significantly re-engineered MDA with a thoroughly reformed machinery that makes it capacity ready to efficiently and effectively deliver on the mandate of democratic governance; and (d) rebranding the public service as a worthy complement to democratic development in Nigeria. While still in service, I took exceeding pride in my technical expertise as an expert-insider with the professional know-how to engage the reform complexity of the Nigerian public service. But after a few years as a permanent secretary, two significant issues became very clear to me. The first is that it takes more than technical competency to achieve a deep-seated institutional reform of the public service in Nigeria. This is because reform is usually caught in a contextual web of political intrigues and statist tendencies that often stifle life out of any reform initiative that does not further political goals and ambitions. It therefore becomes possible that a good vision can generate a beautiful reform dynamics which will inevitably fall flat on its face because it is starved on a political will that is sufficient to take it through its often rough and complex implementation stages.
The second significant point I was confronted with is a bit theoretical. I still have no doubt that an expert-insider is critical to the reform of the public service. This derives from the simple fact that it is only an insider who possesses the detailed knowledge of the intricate and complex dynamics and problematics of the public service. Such an insider is best placed to handle the equally complex reform matrix that has the potentials to heal the service. But this admission comes at the cost of a huge assumption: Can the public service as an institutional supervise its own reform? The validity of this question derives from another simple fact that public servants, over time, have become interested participants in the progress or stagnation of the system. It should not be taken as a matter of course that public servants would be delighted in seeing the transformation of the institution. This is because such reform has several and severe implications that could also negatively impact those who earn their livelihood within the system. The most appropriate term that has been used to represent the unwilling reaction to public service reform is the one that sees the public service as “a great rock in the tide line;” a mighty bureaucratic bulwark that stands as a resistance to any form of reform initiative that seeks to undermine the rule of the bureaucrats. This is one important factor that has stalled the success of many great reform ideas and initiatives since the emergence of the Nigerian Civil Service since 1954.
There is therefore no doubt that if a bureaucratic system throws up a reform champion in the mould of Mrs Winifred Oyo-Ita, who not only combines the knowledge of the reform dynamics needed to take the public service through its complex transformation, the passion to stick with the trajectory of transformation no matter what as well as the political goodwill to provide the ultimate support needed to facilitate reform implementation, such a champion cannot still do without a PPP framework that brings to the reform table the requisite knowledge, funding, materials and expertise that constitute a crucial input into the final success of any reform effort.
When I became an expert-outsider, after twenty seven years of reform agitation and institutional transformation, it became clear that I had a continuing responsibility to the reform of the public service which has remained my lifelong passion. In fact, I am in a far better position, once as an expert-insider and now as an expert-outsider, to contribute to the question of the possibility of the public service reforming itself.