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 Daily Independent Online.
* Friday, July 23, 2004.
Downsize FEC, not Federal Civil Service
Hopes that any
policy initiative for thinning down the running cost of our unwieldy Federal Government would
transcend the now well-worn escapist shibboleth of downsizing the Federal
Civil Service evaporated recently with reports that the Senate Committee
on Public Accounts is presently pushing for a 50 percent reduction of workforce
currently on the payroll of the
Federal Government.
Dropping this hint on a visit to the Police College, Ikeja, Lagos
State, at the head of a three-man fact-finding team, Mr. Mamman Ali, the
chairman of the committee, declared: “We will be faced with two options:
demobilising or retiring civil servants as was done under Murtala
Mohammed regime. Maybe we will retire civil servants and give them 100
percent of their salaries. That way, those who are retired will be able
to establish some business on their own, while the rest continue with
public service.”
We are baffled at the undue haste,
indiscrimination, and extreme arbitrariness with which government betrays its penchant to always
descend on the long suffering masses of this country each time it is
confronted with the just consequences of its apparent thoughtlessness
and hazy vision. At the
commencement of the current reform programme of the Obasanjo
Administration, Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, made a
sing-song of the need to “right-size” the Federal Civil Service, as if those mostly under-paid workers
represent the sole reason why
this Government has so far posted such a dismal record of
performance. It does seem that constant threat of mass lay-off without
sparing any thought for the attendant social costs is the inevitable
antidote the Obasanjo Administration has found for our severely distressed economy. Add to this,
government’s reputation for always reneging on its promises to adequately
compensate those affected by such exercises. Unfortunately, many of
the retrenched workers
often become willing conscripts to crime. Government ought to know that
any reform and recovery programme
that reeks with flagrant insensitivity only succeeds in further alienating the people from it.
This new policy further loses credibility when it is
considered that those complaining about high wage bill are the same
people that accumulate around them an army of aides they do not even
need. With the many years of devastation this country had undergone under
military rule, the minimum expectation was that the present government
would see the wisdom in resisting the temptation of yoking itself with an over-bloated cabinet.
What, for instance, is the government of a yet struggling country like Nigeria doing with
about 47 ministers and an army of special advisers and senior and junior
assistants? It is even worrisome that many of these Federal appointees
have obvious overlapping functions. And these ministers, assistants and
advisers also have their own long lists of staff, whose equally fat
salaries further deplete State reserves. Recently, the Minister of the
Federal Capital Territory confirmed and justified his appointment of two special assistants (1997
university graduates) who receive N2 million each as monthly salary. Even
the National Assembly currently campaigning for the mass-sack of workers has a wage bill that
dwarfs that of the federal civil servants to insignificance.
It is high time this government told itself that
sacking the entire Federal Civil Service would not provide a cocoon for
its gross incompetence in resource management. In fact, it is totally
unwise to use the wage bill to determine the so-called over-bloatedness
of the civil service? What of the overstressed issue of ghost workers?
Who is retaining them and perpetuating the culture of wastage which in
turn swells the wage bill?
Unfortunately, majority of those to be arbitrarily laid
off by government are trained at huge costs. With their sack, government
also loses the opportunity
to benefit from the wealth of experience they had gathered over
the years. It is unfortunate that
government has progressively rendered the civil service redundant
because of its mania for contract awards. A lot of experienced engineers
at, for instance, the Works Ministry, are left to push files in offices
while what they are employed to do are contracted out for reasons of
patronage.
Was government not governed by any sense of rationality
when it was employing these people? In fact, is the argument about an
over-bloated civil service even tenable? Assuming we accept government’s
questionable insistence that the population of the civil service is two
million, what is that in a country of more than 120 million people, when
a country like France, with a population of 56 million, has 4.5 million employees, adequately
remunerated and paid regularly?
In fact, time has come for the
Government to boldly admit to itself that its massive failure is a direct
consequence of its lack of transparency and sincerity of purpose. The
mass pain which the mass sack will unleash is not what the country needs
now. Not even the 100 per cent salary as compensation (that is, assuming
it is ever paid) can establish any meaningful business venture for the
sacked workers given the harsh economic climate prevailing in the nation.
The hapless workers should
not be made to bear the consequences of the present prevalent executive delinquency.
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