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President Muhammadu Buhari may have to be wary of mischievous individuals and failed experts who are bent on derailing his administration but pretend to wish him well.
The leadership of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN) at the weekend recalled that after Buhari won the 2015 presidential poll, some people disguising as experts urged him to prune the civil service, which they claimed was over-bloated, while simultaneously accusing civil servants of being corrupt without substantiating their allegations.
The ASCSN secretary-general, Comrade Alade Bashir Lawal, said the union would not be surprised, as the President just won re-election, if the same retinue of sycophants starts again to beat war drums against civil servants and the civil service claiming as usual that the civil service is over-bloated, corrupt all in an attempt to pit his regime against public service employees.
“What these pseudo-experts do not seem to understand is that there is a marked difference between the civil service made up of line ministries and their departments and other agencies of government,” he said.
According to Lawal, the civil service, which is a sub-set of the entire public service, is made up of line ministries such as Ministries of Agriculture, Budget and National Planning, Communication, Defence, Education, Environment, Federal Capital Territory, Environment, Finance, Foreign Affairs, Health, Information, Interior, Justice, Labour and Employment.
Others ministries are Niger Delta, Petroleum, Power, Works and Housing, Science and Technology, Solid Minerals, Trade, Investment and Industry, Transportation, Water Resources, Women Affairs, Youth and Sports, etc.
He explained that the public service is made up of the civil service as outlined above and other government agencies, including the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the armed forces and the police, Department of customs service, immigration, the prisons, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC), National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Political Office holders including members of the National Assembly and their plethora of Senior and Special Advisers and Assistants, etc.
He said, “By the time the emoluments of employees in the core civil service and these other segments of the public service are reflected in the annual budget, those who do not know the difference between the public service and the civil service invariably come to the wrong conclusion that the civil service gulp about 70% of government expenditure.
“Besides, it must be emphasized that the staff strength of the core civil service is about 80,000 and if you juxtaposed this figure against 200 million population of the country, it will become ridiculous to continue to claim that the civil service is over-bloated. It is necessary to add that the population of the entire public service is about 960,000,” the union said.
