Paul Alabi
Years back, it was the turn of Ifueko Omoigui-Okauru to receive the vicious salvoes. At the Town Hall meeting held in Kano involving the top brass of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), staff and and senior managers who apparently did not like the sweeping reforms the lady had initiated to shake the table, literally descended on her with abuses.
For over two hours the interaction lasted, union officials also hauled invectives at the Management, with no fear of a query.
Indeed, the relationship between management staff of most federal statutory bodies and their staff union borders on insubordination and lawlessness. Usually, the management would declare their mission as balancing corporate interest with that of the work force.
On the other hand, staff members see things differently. In fact, some easily forget their subordinate roles and ascribe to themselves illusory powers to maliciously attack management under the guise of being outspoken.When things go wrong, Civil Service rules prescribe the right channel to address them. The indecorous and militant approach now adopted by several staff unions against perceived wrongs is clearly a hangover of our long years of military rule with the concomitant erosion of civility.
A classic example was the issue of daily travel allowance that came up at the FIRS. Usually, anytime a staff goes on an assignment outside the office, he/she is entitled to a duty tour allowance (DTA). But when one comes back, one is supposed to retire the money. However, there are some officers who are given DTA and they do not go for the number of days they claimed they were going for. In some cases, they do not go at all. These officers who did not refund or did not come back to say they did not go for the number of days they claimed, were asked to pay the amount back. How this simple internal matter became blown outrageously to public attention and became a weapon to malign the management of the service is left to anyone’s imagination.
Of course, there are approval limit and budget. But it can be wrongly applied. Like many agencies, the FIRS has approval limits for the chairman and the directors. The new FIRS Chairman deemed it fit to reduce the approval limits of the directors. Anything that is above their approval limits on a monthly basis has to come to his table. This was obviously informed by a desire to curtail abuse and ensure prudence.
The FIRS has of recent faced the toughest challenge in trying to raise government revenue at a time the economy is facing a depression. Raising the taxpayer base and changing the attitude of taxpayers are enough headache for the management already.
The challenge of the management has been how to meet the rising revenue target while also managing the agitations from the staff. The FIRS staff were used to certain conditions of service. Government used to pay the FIRS staff performance bonuses if they achieve 60 per cent performance of budget. But, the new management said that was not challenging enough. It moved it up to 80 per cent.
So, in 2015, it started paying performance bonus only if it achieved 80 per cent of the target. That was a bit of a challenge to the staff. Of recent, management had to take it down to 70 per cent. That is not saying it will not try to achieve 80 percent to get its performance bonuses but it was trying to apply the cushion. It was now agreed they have to achieve 70 per cent of non-oil revenue collection for the staff to be entitled to performance bonuses.
These are management innovations to increase productivity.
Also, reforms have been introduced in the mode of operations. For instance, instead of the staff getting involved in administrative issues, like buying diesel, petrol, or doing office repairs etc, these have been outsourced.
Now, FIRS have people who supply them diesel for its stations to be up and running. It gets its petrol from Total Nigeria, thereby forbidding staff from withdrawing money from the treasury to buy petrol. Everybody who has a pool car has a Total Top-up card, so that FIRS can keep track of its expenditures. Those are a few of the internal changes made and may never have gone down well with everybody. But this is no justification for throwing decorum to the winds and lashing out to impugn management.
A similar drama has been playing at the Border Communities Development Agency (BDCA) following outlandish reports of a supposedly massive procurement fraud. The allegations were that several contractors shortlisted by the Agency for hundreds of constituency projects failed to meet contracting requirements.
The federal interventionist agency was established in 2003 to develop the country’s border communities. The agency has the mandate to provide social and infrastructural amenities to international border communities in 21 states of the federation, spanning over 105 local government areas.
The allegations were that BDCA procurement officials disregarded some key criteria for selection of prospective contractors, as well as some requirements for the award of contracts, in alleged violation of the Public Procurement Act (PPA) 2007. Also that many of the prequalified or shortlisted bids (or over 83 percent) failed to meet at least one or the two key criteria that define the minimum threshold specified in the bid guidelines among others.
In a clearly orchestrated report by bad losers, the procurement officials at the BDCA were maligned and accused of shortlisting unqualified firms for federal contracts in the 2018 zonal intervention projects; that dozens of firms were pre-qualified to get contracts for federal projects which lawmakers allegedly inserted into the 2018 budget in ‘continuation of their self-enrichment tradition’; that BDCA failed to select qualified contractors for the award of the constituency projects contracts; that bid guidelines on submission of bids by prospective contractors was supposed to be accompanied with a cumulative average annual turnover of a minimum of N50 million for the period 2015, 2016 and 2017.
In the process, a lot government’s confidential information was leaked and splashed across the media; a clear case of breach of the statutory official secret act. Although BDCA claimed that there may have been errors in the process which would still be corrected before the final companies are announced, the dirty deed had been done and the name of the agency and its executive Secretary dragged in the mud.
BDCA came out to clearly defend its handling of the bid process saying the agency in its interventionist activities have always been carried out strictly guided by the provisions of the BCDA Establishment Act. The activities of the agency have given a sense of belonging to those living in border communities and boosted their confidence in the Buhari administration. BCDA noted that not meeting the cumulative average turnover of N50 million over a three-year period as the allegations were made, does not disqualify any company from further considerations for the award of the contracts.
So, whenever you see a typical civil servant leaking confidential documents and complaining bitterly, it most always is that somebody is blocking the loopholes that they have been using to make illegal money. It is always good to take indecorous complaints however reasonable they sound, with a pinch of salt.
In the civil service, principles which prescribe certain behavioral obligation of the staff cannot, in the name of activism or personal interests, be discarded without putting the entire Civil Service at risk over time. In any context, it is a staff’s duty to explore due process to air grievances or seek redress. Civil servants with political interests need urgent clarity about how to operate. Otherwise, they become a big danger to the government as well as the civil service as an institution.
•Mr. Paul Alabi is a public affair analyst and is based in Lagos.