Civil servants and
the unknown future
By Tai Olaniyi
Saturday,
September 9, 2007
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Babagana Kingibe
Photo: Sun News Publishing |
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An average human being looks to the future as a phenomenon
that needs to be planned for and cherished in order for one
to have a blissful eventful life.
Such aspiration is equally typical of an average individual
in the employ of government at whatever cadre in federal,
state or local government level.
At the dawn of Nigeria ’s independence, the civil service
was a beehive of activities because it created a platform
for the early civil servants to prove their worth as pioneers
of an emerging indigenous administration. Similarly, there
was pride in being civil servants.
The advent of military incursion into the nation’s socio-cultural,
economic and political terrains created dimensions of all
sorts to both governance and the credibility of what an ideal
civil service should mean. Civil service and civil servants
degenerated from being enviable to that which in Nigerian
military dictionary in termed, “bloody civil servants”.
Today, civil servants with ever burning desire to live up
to the clarion call as encapsulated in the nation’s
national anthem, have nothing to show for their locality,
faithfulness and honesty. As posited by Professor Adamu Baikie
in his paper on the Nigerian Project,…..” those
in position to enrich themselves from public funds but choose
to remain poor, are usually castigated, mocked at and sometimes
shunned at occasions”.
According to Baikie, on the other side of the divide are the
politicians and their cohorts who are daily engrossed in acquisition
of wealth by all means because the practice is reinforced
by the titles and other marks of recognition conferred on
such people by their communities, religious groups, societies
etc.
Who can then deny that the Nigerian society today is truly
an unenabling environment for investments, patriotism and
incorruptibility where the big thieves only go on sabbatical
leave in prison while the down trodden ones are made to die
in tattered penury.
Why is it that only the children of the highly placed, the
ex-this, ex-that, are recycled to clamp on juicy appointments
yet disregard the abject poverty being experienced by civil
servants who would never be promoted when due, nor be privileged
to reap the fruits of their labor when alive.
Posterity will never forgive many highly placed Nigerians,
those that Obafemi Awolowo aptly described as people in positions
of ruler ship and leadership but are always carousing in clubs,
mingling with men of shady characters and women of easy virtues
especially with public funds.
Those, who because of their acts of omissions and commissions
have made mess the political economy of Nigeria to be synonymous
with Susan Rice allusion to the African misfortune in bad
leadership: “ Africa is too poor to be rich and too
rich to be poor”
Is it not a truism the songs of Peter Tosh and Bob Marley
when they respectively sang that we need “equal rights
and justice” and that ‘in the abundance of water
only the fool is thirsty?”.
Posterity will also not forgive people like minds who are
in public service and when in rooms always thinking of the
problems of Nigeria and how to find solutions to them, but
later allow the seamy side of politics destroy today and tomorrow
of Nigeria .
To deny the bureaucratic bottlenecks, acute ineptitudes, unending
favoritisms and religious hypocrisies associated with the
Nigerian civil servants yesterday and today, is no doubt,
an exercise in self defeat.
However, since militant activity is of the mind rather than
of the muscles, mental argument on the unknown future of civil
servants must be met by mental convictions.
One is inclined as Byran once was,: “we have been cursed
with the reign of gold long enough. Money constitutes no proper
basic of civilization, the time has come to regenerate the
society”.
That time is now to create a more enabling environment for
civil servants to operate and do their work without living
in fear of political intimidations and monetary mesmerism
by the money bags. It is better in the sense that civil service
also provides an avenue for one to manifest the constructive
creative cosmic forces for holistic advancement of the society.
The Nigerian civil servants today live in fear of the unknown
future of their jobs. They are afraid of what is the future
for their offspring when they are forcefully retired and their
benefits not paid. If unfortunate that they die serving their
country, death benefits accruing to relations move and are
paid far less speedily than severance packages, coffin, grave
and maggot allowances of the highly placed demigods in corridor
of power.
If salse knowledge or false principles prevent the brain from
reasoning properly and from grasping true principles, it becomes
obvious that the progress of vibrant civil service in Nigeria
is often slowed down because of poor comprehension of its
importance by those individuals whose tenures fizzle in and
out without appreciable impacts.
To make best of bad situation and thus raise hopes in the
lives of civil servants in Nigeria , let us advise those in
position of governance to reflect on Oliver Goldsmith’s
admonition: “You can preach a better sermon with your
life than with your lips”.
The present generation of Nigerians and even the up coming
ones have no other place to call their home. Nigeria belongs
to all and we must all remain here to salvage it together.
Peace Profound.
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