THE GRAMMAR OF IRRESPONSIBILITY - by Adamu Adamu The latest in the Immigration recruit-ment saga that led to the death of several applicants is that the Federal Government has cancelled the exercise. On Monday, the president had queried Comrade Abba Moro, the minister of the interior, and David Parradang, the controller-general of immigration. But if the government can be said to have been quick in responding to public outcry about the shoddy preparations for the exercise, the preventable deaths that occurred, the illegal moneys that were collected; it has proved almost childish in the solution it offered. After cancelling the exercise, the president directed that three automatic employment slots be reserved for the relatives of each of the deceased applicants and one slot for each injured person. This solution is worse than the unfortunate exercise that caused the initial problem. There is nothing more edifying or more service-friendly in giving job slots to families of deceased applicants than there is in sharing it out to lawmakers or to governors or selling it for money. Any job given out for any consideration other than the merit of the individual case becomes part of the spoils system. And spoils are spoils, and they go, not to the best but to the luckiest battalion. But now, the spoils are almost the spoils of war in which the dead and injured are being rewarded blood money for participation in a war against the Ministry of the Interior and the Immigration Department. While it is good for the government to show concern, it should have found a better way of consoling the bereaved families. You can’t console some people cheated by your system by making it more corrupt. And they have a way of creating spoils upon spoils. The practice of government agencies collecting monies—whether on the orders of the president, or as a reward of internally-generated revenue or as an Escrow Account—and utilising these without depositing them in the Consolidated Revenue Fund and disbursing them from the Federation Account without appropriation by law is not just a cause for corruption: it is the Mother of all Corruption. But those who do not remember accidents or who take them for playthings are doomed to repeat them. In July 2008, the same Immigration Department and the Nigerian Prisons Service conducted a recruitment interview at which 17 applicants died as a result of stampede; but no precautions were taken to forestall the tragedy that occurred. And when vacancy for 4,556 was declared by the office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation in 2011, approval was given for recruitment. However, that earlier attempt to recruit was botched up; and Moro ought to have gone then, but he didn’t; and instead, it was Mrs Rosemary Uzoma who was sacrificed. It is indeed a pity that Moro is always in the news only for the wrong reasons. As interior minister, Moro should have been the one to reassure the nation and keep it informed by giving a blow-by-blow account of the unfolding security situation as troops battle, or fail to battle, Boko Haram. However, by his silence and absence from the scene, he created a vacuum that was then filled by the service chiefs; and the nation was doubly short changed. It didn’t get the truth of what was happening and it got its officers so politicised that the nation learnt of an altercation between them and their minister. All this is merely the symptom and not the disease; the disease is that the civil service has been destroyed and no one knows how to put it back right. The devastation has been great but the solution is really very easy; but the problem is now in the hands of those who do not understand it—and they understand the solution even less. Nothing will put ministers in their places and civil servants in theirs other than to take back the service to its merit-based past and shield it from political interference. Beginning in China more than two centuries before Christ [AS] and, more especially, in Britain less than two centuries ago, the principle of a merit-based civil service was laid down; and experience accumulated over this period has proved that only such a service as is independent of, and protected from, political interference and whose members are recruited and administered by a central, politically neutral body, will give society value for money and be, and remain, a bulwark against corruption. The civil service is made up of the entire body of those officers employed in civil administration as distinct from military service or elected officials. Its members are chosen through a competitive examination and promoted on the basis of merit; and their duty is to advise in the formulation of policy and to implement what is agreed as policy by the political leadership. In order for civil servants to advise without fear and implement without favour, they need to be protected from the consequences of their tendering unpopular advice; and they are given this protection by the Public Service Commission, PSC, which guarantees and ensures their freedom and permanence, so that no political leader—and not even the president—can adversely affect the professional progress of any civil servant without a good, acceptable and legal reason that is applied through due process. There is little doubt that the PSC is the most important national institution, though unfortunately, this is not in a way that is immediately obvious; and unless it is allowed to resume its previous functions of appointing, promoting, transferring, punishing and dismissing civil servants, there is nothing in the world that can reduce, much less end, corruption in this country. This nation has grown more corrupt in direct proportion to how much the PSC is distanced from its power to appoint, promote or discipline officer in the civil service. This power has slowly been imperceptibly chipped away, until it was totally overthrown by the so-called reforms introduced by Decree No. 43 during the Babangida administration, when the permanent secretary became director-general and the minister was empowered to usurp the powers of the PSC. And corruption in Nigeria has never had a better reason for ascendancy. The nation may enact all laws, create all the economic crime fighting agencies it can imagine, bolster up the nation’s fraud-prevention, fraud-detection and fraud-fighting units in the police or create on in every ministry; but nothing will ever change. Today, not only is recruitment and appointment not on merit, the spoils available aren’t just for the taking; they are for the sharing. Lawmakers, senior civil servants, politicians and well-connected elders are all given their share of the spoils. And, in addition, they have a way of creating spoils upon spoils. The practice of government agencies collecting monies—whether on the orders of the president, or as a reward of internally-generated revenue or as an Escrow Account—and utilising these without depositing them in the Consolidated Revenue Fund and disbursing them from the Federation Account without appropriation by law is not just a cause for corruption: it is the Mother of all Corruption. Any probe must find out what has happened or will happen to the six billion naira said to have been collected by the organisers/consultants of the examination. But by saying that he couldn’t resign because he had work to do, Moro seemed to have appreciated the gravity of his appointment, but he has apparently not yet realised the magnitude of his failure to live up to it in this case—and has understood nothing of its implications. As the non-permanent political head of his ministry, the honourable minister must accept ownership and responsibility for policy in force; and, along with David Parradang, the Controller-General of Nigerian Immigration Service, be ready to accept full responsibility for the way and manner that policy is implemented by the civil servants under him. All the same, perhaps it is pointless to call on the minister to resign or the president to sack him in a country where every other minister ought to have resigned or been sacked, and not least because neither of them will have heeded the call even if made, anyway. Today, if the minister or the immigration boss doesn’t feel compelled by the circumstances to resign, it only goes to show how public officers regard the nation what it has to offer as a system of spoils and their appointments as their own share of it. They take it without any respect for the nation that gives them the spoils. And the only way he can show respect to the nation—respect for it and its institutions and acceptance of the duty of care and skill which political appointees owe it and its people—is by admitting that in failing to provide for such an elementary requirement as a safe and secure venue for an interview, and by collecting fees that are not known to the nation’s public employment law, he has not given it of his best. That is the best time when an officer should consider leaving the service; but from experience, that is when the officer in fact digs in his feet. In Nigeria, the grammar of irresponsibility always starts with the syntax of corruption—and ends with system abuse, which is why the system never gets better; it always gets worse.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 14:29:11 +0000
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