“It is the civil servants that carry out government policies. The public sector is the engine room for government, and if the workforce is not well-trained, there is a big problem”. -Mrs. Winifred Oyo-Ita, Former Head of Civil Service of the Federation.

An efficient and productive public service is vital to the socio-economic development of any nation. Since Nigeria’s return to the fourth republic in 1999, several efforts have been made to reform the public service to achieve transparency, productivity and accountability.

According to Dr. Joe Abah, former Director General of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms, Nigeria had the best public sector in the commonwealth before the 1967-1970 civil war, which devastated the country.

He said that the Chief Jerome Udoji reforms were developed post-civil war to explore new ways of driving efficiency in the public sector. This covered the provision of budget objectives and outcomes, performance management, and benchmarking of the peer of the public sector to that of the private sector to attract the right talents. 

“Unfortunately, the government at that time adopted the pay increase recommendations but did not implement the Udoji reforms.” He noted that many things people emphasize today about management by objectives and key performance indicators were articulated through the reforms. 

Dr. Abah said the most recent public sector reform was the Professor Stephen Oronsaye report which focused on the following:

• Taking an Inventory of all the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) 
• Review MDAs that were not serving any useful purpose
• Identify MDAs with duplicate functions
• Highlight MDAs that should be profitable and revenue-generating
• Assess the governance structure of MDAs, to reposition them.

The Oronsaye report, according to him, was submitted in 2012 but was not implemented. The latest reports monitored by WebTV showed that the report has been reviewed by the current administration and is now fully implemented. 

He acknowledged the AIG Imoukhuede Foundation, which, from a private sector standpoint, had provided significant interventions in public sector reforms in Nigeria by developing a proper performance management system and a public sector index.

Speaking at a 2018 African Securities Exchange Association (ASEA) conference in Lagos, the Founder of the AIG Imoukhuede foundation, Mr. Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, said, “My notion is that we cannot afford to live in Africa, with this under-investment in the capacity of the public sector,  because we will all suffer for it. So, the AIG Imoukhuede foundation is about building public service capacity”.

This has been achieved through a strategic partnership with the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation, which has led to several capacity-building sessions, scholarships for top-performing public servants to learn governance in top-rated global institutions and cash prizes for outstanding public servants. 

Recently the AIG-Imoukhuede foundation led senior government officials, including the Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Dr. Folashade Yemi Esan, to a United Kingdom study tour on governance and public administration.

The partnership between the foundation and the Office of the Head of Civil Service has further demonstrated the possibility of achieving productivity and dynamism in the public sector through a strategic and innovative public-private partnership (PPP) model.

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