“In the Nigerian Public Service, the spectre of “private interest” looms larger than “public interest”. This calls for restraint and a reorientation of all involved in the governance. The greater responsibility falls on leadership at all levels. They should lead by example. Public officers should stand by the truth as their armour, and exhibit transparency and accountability in their conduct”.

“The challenge of the Nigerian Public Service now and in the future is essentially behavioural and calls for a change of attitude to the conduct and management of public affairs. The challenges center on compliance with and enforcement of the rules and this essentially rests on leadership at all levels of governance, particularly leadership at the topmost levels. … People’s response to the implementation of policies and programmes is the barometer for assessing the impact of governance. Unfortunately, at the moment, more negative than positive responses are coming from the populace. This should be a source of serious concern to all public servants”. - `Bukar Usman in Reflections on The Nigerian Public Service: Way Forward For Governance at the CORFEPS Colloquium 2024

The lead paper presenter, my own mentor and our most respected senior colleague, Dr Bukar Usman, has identified that “there are more negative than positive responses from the populace on our public service at the moment” and has anchored the root causes on two key factors, namely: Conflict of Interest and Leadership. Speaking on conflict of interest, Dr. Bukar Usman states: “In the Nigerian Public Service now, the spectre of “private interest” looms larger than “public interest” and that “the challenges center on compliance with and enforcement of the rules”, which “essentially rests on leadership at all levels of Governance, particularly leadership at the topmost levels”. I am in total agreement with him. Conflict of interest is a function of integrity, which speaks to honesty, truthfulness and a consistent and uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values, and strong opposition to hypocrisy.

That is why my Discussant’s submission is titled: Integrity Is at The Centre of Eroding Competence and Capacity of The Public Service in Nigeria, But It Is a Leadership Challenge.

As a scientist and an advocate of integrity in public service, I will be deploying concrete data and facts to examine the issues of conflict of interest, integrity, and leadership and how it has played out in the Nigerian public service in the last 20 years, to enable us all to provide firm recommendations on the way forward. The instances of current data and situation analysis where they have occurred is to connect participants to what currently exists, especially as performance of the past leadership of the civil service from 1999-2015 and of the Presidents have been covered in Goke Adegoroye (2015) Restoring Good Governance In Nigeria (RGGN) Volume 1: The Civil Service Pathway and Volume 2: Leadership and Political Will.

2. In a Presidential System There Cannot Be Double Loyalties, One to The HCSF Contending with The President’s

 The import of national interest (or public interest, as stated by Bukar Usman) as the core objective of operations of the civil service was what made President Olusegun Obasanjo at the Presidential Retreat on Public Sector Reforms and Public-Private Partnership in Abuja in August 2005, in his vote of thanks to the Chairmen of the Plenary Sessions, to say of the then Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mahmud Yayale Ahmed, as follows:

“As a Civil Servant, the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation is often caught between loyalty to the Civil Service his constituency, and national interest, but I am happy to say that more often than not he has stood on the part of national interest”.

In a Keynote Address titled: “Public Service Reform for Sustainable Development: the Nigerian Experience” that I delivered at the Commonwealth Advanced Seminar in Wellington, New Zealand in January 2006, I had used that quote to interrogate the loyalty of the then HCSF and was able to resolve that, unless there was an error of parallax, his loyalty to the civil service could never have been out of alignment with his loyalty to the nation, because the civil service is by tradition the guardian of national interest. In other words, what we were dealing with then was a wrong perception, borne out of the style of Yayale Ahmed putting both his integrity and official position on the line to defend the civil service. Unlike 2005-2007, my assessment in the last few years is that a different type of loyalty has been contending with national interest in the last 10 years. The cultivation of private interest is producing a strange and perilous harvest of loyalty to the occupant of the Office of the HCSF rather than to the civil service system. In a Presidential Democracy, national interest is embodied in the President, by his election and oath of office. Accordingly, there cannot be another loyalty to an official outside the personage of the President.

What is not clear to the public is that the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation is not in charge of federal public services. There are constitutional and structural limits to the powers of the HCSF, as the office is confined to only those public servants appointed by the FCSC. All other services, from the military to the Police, Para-Military services, the Judiciary, National Assembly, the Intelligence Community (DSS, NIA, EFCC) as well as agencies and statutory corporations, are outside the control of the HCSF. That is why I said in some of my presentations that an HCSF trying to overstep its boundaries is like a Rooster parading heavily adorned comb and ear lobes in the midst of lions, tigers, bulls etc. with horns and massive claws. The entire population of civil servants controlled by the HCSF at any given time stands at less than 10% of the federal workforce. But it is our own equivalent of what in other climes is termed the Elite Service, with certain oversight responsibilities that are expected to be discharged in the national interest for the entire public service.

3. Integrity is the Key

My assessment of what is needed to reposition the public service in Nigeria is captured in the concluding paragraph of my Briefing to President Yar’Adua in my capacity as DG BPSR in August 2007, where I said as follows: “…To truly reposition the public service as a virile national institution for the - realization of our core national development aspirations in the 21st Century, in one word, what is required as the key is INTEGRITY. If we can uphold integrity, transparency and equity in appointment, discipline, staff training, job deployment and promotion processes, we would have solved 80% of the problems of the civil service and the Nigerian public service of our dream will be within our reach”. - Goke Adegoroye in Briefing by the DG BPSR to the President, Commander-in-Chief Federal Republic of Nigeria 14 August 2007 In: Goke Adegoroye (2010) Beyond Yours Faithfully p. 159-217.

4. Dimensions of Leadership Integrity in Civil Service Processes and Procedures

Notwithstanding the subsisting constitutional and structural limitations of the powers of the OHCSF, the key to the effective management of the entire public service by a sitting HCSF is integrity. Let us put aside the buzz words, the jargons and the slogans of our reforms STEP, EPIC, KPI, Digital and Transformational, etc. Over the past 20 years we have set up many agencies, programmes and procedures to bring efficiency to fund utilization and transparency to appointment. From IPPIS, Due Process in Public Procurement, EFCC, ICPC, Fiscal Responsibility Act, the 3-layered examination/screening processes in the appointment of perm secs, etc., yet, we are worse off now as a nation, as the corruption and leakages have been horrendous, because of crisis of integrity at several levels of leadership positions. As I have said many time, the art of budget manipulation for personal gains has now become the coveted expertise that political office holders head hunt in getting Accounting Officers deployed to their MDAs and, arising therefrom, hitherto honest officers in their increasing numbers are yielding to the temptation of joining the band wagon.

Misplaced values is also a function of integrity at both personal and institutional levels. For example, we seem to place more emphasis on the paraphernalia of offices than what will enhance productivity. The reality of what is going on played out on us last Monday, 26 February, 2024, during the Press Briefing for this Colloquium. We were held up for one hour as there was no light. No light at the most important Conference Hall of the OHCSF. Hajiya Ammuna Lawal Ali and I were lamenting and wondering how our current colleagues in the service could feel comfortable riding their SUVs to offices that suffer this type of blackout and without working tools. We both agreed that, were we in the position, we would rather the SUVs were withdrawn from us in exchange for a permanent solution to the power challenge in our offices.

As stated above, Integrity in the civil service leadership is what will uphold honesty, transparency and equity in the HR processes of appointment, promotion, deployment, training and discipline. This is because the Integrity backbones of the HCSF and the Perm Secs are what will strengthen those at the Directorate levels and below to muster the courage to take the right actions on their respective desks. The inability of public servants to see honesty, transparency and equity in these processes, arising from the questionable integrity of their leaders, is the major factor in the falling standards in the service.

I have been writing since 2011 about how successive HCSFs have moved stealthily towards hijacking the presidential powers of appointment and deployment, through the smokescreen of the written examinations cum oral interview screening processes, but the blatant way the processes have been manipulated, in recent years, to achieve predetermined ends makes me to wonder who, indeed, between the HCSF and the President is vested with those powers.

If allegations of financial inducement in the appointment of perm secs have been difficult to substantiate, what cannot be disproved is the trend of professional bias/favoritism in appointment that started to creep into the service some 15 years ago, where the emergence of Accountants as Heads of the Civil Service appeared to have triggered an increased number of accountants and procurement officers appointed as Perm Secs. Now, with a graduate of Dental Surgery as HCSF, not only has that trend been playing out in favour of medical doctors since 2019 when the incumbent assumed the position, it has been taken to an unprecedented level with a quarter of the perm sec cadre composed of medical doctors. Considering how diverse the Officer cadres of the civil service is, ranging from the Common Services cadres of those in Administration, Planning Research and Statistics, Accounting, Procurement, to the professional Officers cadres across Ministries, in Agriculture, Aviation, Commerce, Culture and Tourism, Education, Environment, Health, Lands, Housing and Urban Planning Information, Justice, Sports, Water Resources, Works and Highway, the predomination of medical doctors in the appointment of permanent secretaries is beyond the ordinary. Unfortunately, such lopsidedness in appointment has not been matched by any improvement in the competence of Perm Secs as accounting officers.

Civil/public servants know themselves in terms of competence, capacity and character/integrity. Those with potentials to rise to the level of Perm Secs are already showing such traits at AD/DD (GL 15/16) levels such that by the time they are appointed Perm Sec, they already earn the acceptance and respect of their peers and subordinates. Of course, the reverse is the case when a misfit emerges as a newly appointed Perm Sec as there is a general feeling of deja vu, disappointment and loss of morale; and this has been happening with increasing frequency in the last 10 years.

I recall the day Mahmud Yayale Ahmed called me to his office as HCSF to give me my letter of appointment as DG BPSR. I had no inkling that anything was in the offing. Handing me the letter he said, “Goke, this is a reward for your hard work, dedication to duty and patriotism”, and I could not hold my tears. I was not working with him directly, but as a HCSF he took notice of me. Similarly, 3 years later when the consequential vacancy in my State finally occurred, I spoke to no one throughout the stages of my screening for appointment as Perm Sec. Nowadays, you hear of people going round places and people to lobby to be appointed Perm Sec. It is now common to see some candidates boast of the certainty of their being appointed, even before the commencement of the exercise, just as it is an open secret that, by their appointments and deployments, civil servants now know the favourite Perm Secs of a sitting HCSF.

5. The Challenge of Residual Actors in a Political Transition

5.1 In his Goodwill Message to this CORFEPS Colloquium, General Yakubu Gowon has continued to relish how he respected the courage and conviction of the advice of the permanent secretaries of his days, thus highlighting “speaking truth to power” as perhaps the most important quality in civil servants that is appreciated by political leaders. Speaking truth to power (a moral imperative to stand up for what is right before national leaders even when it is not the easiest thing to do) is a function of personal integrity. An officer without integrity cannot muster the required courage to speak truth to power.

There is no period in the life of an administration that this quality is most crucial than during political transition from one administration to the other. The 2023 transition was an unusual one, where the in-coming administration was riding into power on a national popular vote of a little over 37% and barely 20% in the FCT the seat of power, meaning that the President was in the middle of non-friendly foes. Under such setting, there is no greater challenge that can confront an incoming administration than that of Residual Actors whose relationship with the in-coming administration is, most often, driven by selfpreservation. As I have said, quite a few times, quoting Louis Gawthrop, in his 1997 article titled, “Democracy, Bureaucracy and Hypocrisy Redux: A search for Sympathy and Compassion”, the civil servants are the masters in the “professional environment wherein the art of pretense, the methods of acting or playing a role, indeed, of wearing a mask, become the virtual prerequisites for a successful career”. (Goke Adegoroye (2015) RGGN vol. 1 The Civil Service Pathway p. 16-17)

How did this play out during the political transition of 2023 with the civil service leadership hierarchy, namely: Perm Secs, CEOs and other accounting officers and most importantly the HCSF as the arrowhead residual actor of the immediate past administration that the new administration had to rely upon for briefing on what was on ground? Was the incoming administration availed the truth in briefing them about subsisting HRM policies? Or were the briefings, and other official actions that were taken on behalf of the new administration, carried out from the recesses of the personal biases of the respective Perm Secs and HCSF, with the sole aim of self-preservation?

5.2 Redeployment of Perm Secs Barely 24 Hours After Swearing In of New President Take for example the massive redeployment of perm secs that was made to take effect on 30 May 2023, barely 24 hours after the swearing in of a new President, which, but for the over ruling of President Buhari, had included a recommendation that the Perm Sec State House who was to attain the 60 years mandatory age of retirement in less than two and a half months away in August should move from the State House to another Ministry. This raises curious questions: i. What was the urgency for movement of permanent secretaries 2 days after inauguration of the President, when the appointment of Ministers within the time prescribed by the constitution was bound to elicit further movement of perm secs? ii. What were the MDA specific requirements and the personal quality and HR criteria that informed those movements? iii. Whose agenda was being prosecuted? iv. How would it have engendered the smooth and steady take-over of government as required? v. With the benefit of hindsight, how much of the unsteady operations in the Ministries at the time the Ministers eventually came in are traceable to this late hour replacement of the Accounting Officers? vi. Had the out-going President Buhari not overruled the redeployment of the Perm Sec State House, how would it have played out in the afternoon of 30 May 2023 when the new President Tinubu came to take over at the State House, starting with his first inspection of the Brigade of Guards, in an atmosphere where a new Perm Sec who was not familiar with either the grounds or the people in charge was also just assuming duty? vii. Indeed, how legal or constitutional were those deployments, since the powers for the appointment and deployment of Perm Secs are vested in the President? In this regard, we must remember that at the point of swearing in, the President has been made to take over the affairs of State and was expected to rely on the Accounting Officers, CEOs and Service -Chiefs in place for briefing on what was on ground under their jurisdiction. Any redeployment of these officers from their confirmed duty posts as handed over on the day of swearing in, not made with the explicit approval of the just sworn-in President, amounts to a hijack of presidential powers.

Recalling our experience when CORFEPS paid a courtesy call on President Muhammadu Buhari in 2016 Talking of briefing a new administration with honesty by residual actors, Chief Philip Asiodu as chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Council of Retired Federal Permanent Secretaries, had led us the members of the Executive Committee to meet President Buhari in 2016. During our interaction, I raised my fears of the briefings by residual actors during political transition on the take-off trajectory of his administration, citing my briefing to President Yar’Adua in 2007 where I stated it often takes between 6-18 months for a new administration to know the true position on most issues. It was as if I had hit the nail on its head, in terms of what was troubling him, as he jumped in: “Dr Adegoroye, you are correct, very correct! When I came in I was not in a hurry to bring in Ministers because I felt the Perm Secs could assist me until I fully settled down. The Perm Sec Transport was one of the people that briefed me. I went on air to make statements based on the briefings that I got from him. Barely 2 days, later, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala countered me in a national television. I summoned the Head of the Civil Service to bring the Perm Sec before me. When they came, I repeated what he had earlier briefed me and asked him to confirm if that was his briefing, which he did. I asked if he was aware of the counter opinion of Ngozi Okonjo Iweala and he similarly did. I then requested him to confirm who was correct between Ngozi and I, and he said “hmmmmm Your Excellency, the position relayed by Dr Ngozi is the correct position”! I told the Head of the Civil Service to take him out, but that one too just deployed him to another Ministry. So I had to take the two of them out of the system”.

6. The Challenges of Competence, Capacity, and Integrity

Competence, capacity and character/integrity are closely interwoven but integrity rules them all. For example, we know that capacity to learn and take corrections will undoubtedly improve competence, but that capacity stems from an honest admission of the need to learn and the humility to take advice or correction, both of which are a function of personal integrity inspired confidence. There are 2 cases that I want to cite to illustrate where the challenges of competence, capacity and character/integrity lie. Both are taken from the list of what I have been advocating in the last 10 years, in my books: Restoring Good Governance In Nigeria (RGGN) Volume 1: The Civil Service Pathway and Volume 2: Leadership and Political Will and presentations and they expose: (i) the weakness in the capacity of the civil service to take correction, and (ii) the manipulation of policy implementation and public service rules for self-preservation. One is as simple as it can be, yet important, while the other is at the root of the current rumblings in the civil service with grave consequences for succession and productivity, namely: • Wrong acronyms, procedures, processes and protocols that have been institutionalized, and • Wrong implementation/application of major policy and its public service rule: The Tenure Policy 6.1 Weakness in the capacity of the civil service to take correction The example of the acronym MDAs which I have stated many times that it refers to self-accounting entities headed by Accounting Officers and therefore means: Ministries, Extra-Ministerial Departments and Agencies NOT Ministries, Department and Agencies, since in our setting Departments are headed by Directors who report to Accounting Officers. Two times I was invited by the current HCSF to make a presentation on the “Roles and Responsibilities of Perm Secs as Administrative Heads and Accounting Officers of Their MDAs” at the Induction Workshop of newly appointed Perm Secs in February and July 2020, and the interpretation of “MDAs” as an acronym was one of the wrong acronyms, processes, procedures and protocols that I said have been institutionalized and must be corrected by Perm Secs at their desks. Anyone in doubt should open the first page of the Financial Regulation (FR) and see rules 101, 102 and 104 on the definition of Accountant General of the Federation as Chief Accounting Officer, Auditor General for the Federation and of Permanent Secretary and Head of Extra-Ministerial Department as Accounting Officer. Before now, I have been wondering why it has been difficult for the media, the National Assembly and Ministers to take correction on this simple definition, and several more, despite my years of advocacy until I saw in the social media recently, Circular Ref No: HCSF/3065/VI/189 of 19 February 2024, issued under the signature of the HCSF and titled: “Measures To Curtail The Leakage of Sensitive Official Information/Documents In Ministries, Departments And Agencies (MDAs)”! In contrast though, circulars issued under the signature of Boss Mustapha, a non-civil servant, as SGF were correctly titled as “ExtraMinisterial Departments” (Ref. No. SGF/OP/I/S.3/T/29 of 28th August 2019) while previous circulars from the OHCSF before the incumbent came into office were consistently similarly in error (e.g. HCSF/511/II/T/164 of 10th April 2019). Like the Yoruba would say: “oro p’esi je” - the question itself has swallowed the answer! The OHCSF is the incubator of this and similar errors that I have been advocating their correction!

6.2 Manipulation of policy implementation and public service rules for self-preservation The Tenure Policy came into effect in 2009. It was suspended for the most part of the Buhari administration, effective 17th June, 2016, with a directive conveyed in letter No. SH/COS/100/A/1462 and announced in circular HCSF/428/S.1/139 of 20th July 2016. Suddenly in a Circular issued on 27th July, 2023, the HCSF announced the restoration of the Tenure Policy with a directive that Directors who have spent 8 years on the grade should immediately retire from the Service. In contrast to Public Service Rule (PSR) 020908 on 35 years’ service or 60 years of age, whichever comes first, for mandatory retirement of career officers, a further condition of service is attached on account of the Tenure Policy to Directors and Permanent Secretaries through PSR 020909, which stipulates that “A Director or its equivalent by whatever nomenclature it is described in MDAs shall compulsorily retire upon serving eight years on Tenure Policy on the post; and a Permanent Secretary shall hold office for a term of four years, and renewable for a further four years, subject to satisfactory performance and no more.”

In compliance with the HCSF circular, all Directors (GL 17) who have spent 8 years on the grade have now been off-loaded, even when they are yet to clock 35 years of service or 60 years of chronological age. One of the affected officers, who was removed on 31st October, 2023, is John Olusola Magbadelo a highly productive PhD holder who has been the life wire of a key Department within the OHCSF. He has spent only 32 years of service and is not due on account of 60 years of age either. His CV is better than most of his superiors: BSc Political Science (Lagos) 1987, MSc International Relations (Ife) 1989, PhD (Political Science) Usmanu Danfodiyo University 2001 with a research grant from the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). He was promoted Director of Admin in 2014. In the course of his career, he had served at the Federal Ministry of Labour & Employment 1996-2003; Cabinet Secretariat OSGF 2003-2009; Ministry of Defence 2009-2011; Ministry of Petroleum Resources 2011-2017; Cabinet Affairs Office 2017-2019; Ministry of Labour & Employment 2021-2022 and at the OHCSF in charge of key Department as Director, Civil Service Transformation 2022-2023, where he was the life wire coordinating the Federal Civil Service Strategy and Implementation Plan 2021-2025. Yet, he was let go while Permanent Secretaries who have spent over 4 years have continued in office without any known screening to affirm their “satisfactory performance” as stipulated in PSR 020909. Right here in this hall this morning, the Chairman FCSC Prof Tunji Olaopa, in his brief remarks, spoke of the anti-intellectualism posture of today’s civil service. It is my hope that the treatment meted to him was not a fallout of that anti-intellectualism.

The Tenure Policy was not designed to accord any officer a serial 8-year limit on every grade level from Director through Perm Sec to the HCSF. Tenure is the instrument of political appointment. It is already enshrined in the Public Service Rules. I have been writing on the implementation short-coming and wrong application of the Tenure policy for over 10 years. It is comprehensively covered in RGGN vol 2. P 87-95. Most Nigerian national dailies, especially The Guardian, have published my write-ups on it. But succeeding HCSF have opted to be rather self-serving in their implementation of the policy. The integrity of the civil service leadership is obviously at stake here. Not a few are alarmed that Dr. John Magbadelo and others like him, who could have been an asset to this administration at this critical time, were compulsorily retired on account of Tenure Policy implementation by a civil service whose leadership has spent 12 years on the grade of Perm Sec and above and is waiting for 60 years of age as due date of retirement!

Such cases, and there are many of them, are open secrets Service-wide. They are the source of recent grumblings among the Directorate level officers. Corridor grumbling is the first step to low morale. Low morale leads to passive resistance, loss of effectiveness and low productivity. It reminds me of how outstanding career officers of the NTA, namely Sola Atere and Eugenia Abu were removed from service in 2017 on account of having completed a 3-year tenure as Executive Directors of the NTA. Applications of public service rules demand consistency not selectivity. It reflects on the integrity of the civil service leadership.

7. There Must Be Some Non-Negotiable Skills Set for Appointment As HCSF

A lot has been said here today about how things have seemingly fallen apart with regard to competence, professionalism and integrity of the public service. It is obvious that a lot also needs to be done to improve the civil service in terms of capacity, competence, and professionalism. The leadership must command the respect of the entire public service, through their career path, trajectory and emergence. It needs to be understood by all that the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HCSF) is the de facto chief human resources manager of the federation. It is not a post for anyone to start learning the ropes about the requirements of the job. Skills such as the combination of proven capability in policy analysis, administrative skills, human resource management, personal integrity, as well as ability and readiness to enforce Public Service rules and regulations should be the non-negotiable requirements of the job. The loose constitutional provision in 171 (3) that “Appointment to the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation shall not be made except from among permanent Secretaries or equivalent rank in the Civil Service of the Federation or of a State” does not preclude a diligent search for candidates with these skills.

Our experience since 1999 has shown that for those whose career paths are outside HRM and Admin, but professional cadres of science, engineering, accounting and medicine, multiple years on the grade of Perm Sec is not a guarantee that those skills would have been acquired. On my part, I have stressed that personal integrity is at the center of it all because, even for the professional cadre candidates who are short on HRM skills, personal integrity qualities of receptivity to new ideas and advice, ability to take correction, transparency, honesty and ability to place national interest above personal interest will enable them to make success of their tenure. How does one explain a situation where during an Induction Workshop for newly appointed Permanent Secretaries, a simple advice to a HCSF not to sign official documents as Head of Service of the Federation but as Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, being the correct title of the office as prescribed in the constitution, had to lead to an argument!?

8. Appointment of HCSF Demands More Serious Search

Another observation that is worth re-examining is how Heads of the Civil Service of the Federation are appointed. It should be a source of concern that while exams are required to get recruited into the civil service and rise through the ranks to Director and even Perm Sec, not an assessment, interview or thorough screening is needed to be appointed a HCSF. The winning strategy is loyalty to the sitting HCSF and the right connection. Toward this end, the standard practice has been for the out-going HCSF to forward a short list of his choice of 3 names to the President from which one would be picked. This is a practice that breeds self-perpetuation, since like begets likes. It is only an HCSF who is removed from office before his/her due date that misses out on that opportunity. With the right connections, even that platform can be by-passed, as I was able to do 13 years ago.

In 2011, after Prof Dapo Afolabi had directed the Perm Secs who met his eligibility criteria to submit their CVs and was trying to set in motion his own process of making recommendation to the President for his replacement, all it took me after being approached by one of the aspiring candidates was to take the particular candidate’s CV to the person who was best to get the listening ears of the President, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala (NOI), as the candidate that I felt was best for the job. As pioneer DG Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR) and member of the Technical arm of the Economic Team under President Obasanjo during her first tour of duty as Minister 2003-2006, Ngozi had confidence in my sense of judgement. I was the one who had to provide answers to all the questions bothering her, to clear doubts based on what she had heard of the candidate. NOI went promptly to see the President, carrying in her hands the CV that I gave her and in 24 hours the announcement was made. She did not meet the candidate until he was being sworn in at the Council chambers. It was then, as the candidate was going round receiving the congratulatory handshakes of the cabinet members and got to NOI and was saying thank you that she whispered back to him, “Go and thank Goke”. Both relayed the encounter to me after.

Tedious filtering and performance index review were said to have been applied to screen candidates on the basis of Character, Performance, Integrity, Quality and Job KPI to produce Mr. Lawrence Wong Shyun Tsai, currently one of the two Deputy Prime Ministers, as the next Prime Minister of Singapore with effect from November 2024. As Chairman of the Osun State Public Service Transformation Team in 2012-2013, we designed a set of 20 Quality Traits which we administered as Questionnaire to the 26 eligible perm secs, with instruction for each to take him/herself out of the equation and score the other 25 in each of those qualities. Key among the quality traits that were assessed in the questionnaire are: • Courage to uphold what is right and defend the service; • Service-wide/public perception about officers (a) proneness to corrupt inducement; (b) wealth above what can be explained by his/her official earnings; (c) ownership of privately owned properties and businesses; and (d) ownership and utilization of personally-owned or cronies-owned companies to execute government contracts. The top 3 candidates were recommended to the Governor who, being impressed with our approach, had to pick the topmost candidate as the Head of Service of the State. In relaying this approach in my 2015 twin-volume books, I had asked: “if the federal government had adopted the Osun model to assess Directors and Perm Secs for their respective next grade how many of those who have occupied the seats ever since would have successfully scaled this hurdle”? (RGGN vol. 1: The Civil Service Pathway p. 86-89).

The fact that the position of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation has over these years been filled mostly on the weight of political connections rather than proven skills, competence, capacity and integrity, is probably why some occupants of the office have not been able to see the upholding of national/public interest as their primary purpose and, rather, have been largely preoccupied with personal/private interests, to oil their self-preservation strategies of answering to the general demands of political heavyweights, including satisfying those interests and theirs in appointment and deployment recommendations to the President. We certainly need a better process for screening and making appointments into high level and critical bureaucratic positions. It is one of the reasons why, conscious of the subsisting constitutional and structural limitations of the powers of the OHCSF covering less than 10% of the Federal workforce, I have been advocating an Institutional Framework to Strengthen the Bureaucracy through the establishment of a Federal Public Service Council to be charged, among others, with: • “Screening of candidates for recommendation to the President for appointment as Head of the Civil Service of the Federation”; and • “Carrying out stage 2 assessment of candidates already screened by the HCSF for appointment as Perm Secs, before the final recommendations are forwarded to the President.” (RGGN Vol. 1: The Civil Service Pathway, p. 296-301)

9. The Public Service Reflects the Political Leadership

It is always said that “a nation’s capacity for development is a function of the capacity of its bureaucracy/public service”. There is a sense in which it can also be said that the public service at any point in time is a reflection of a nation’s political leadership. This is particularly true in a nation operating the Presidential system where the powers for appointment into bureaucratic leadership positions are vested by the constitution in the President, who is also the Head of State, the Chief Executive of the Federation and Commander-inChief of the Armed Forces of the Federation. As members of CORFEPS, in this Colloquium, we have raised the issues and drawn on the weight of our experience and institutional memories to proffer recommendations on the way forward. It is now up to the President to take ownership of his bureaucracy, as he has done for his cabinet. Going by records of the responsiveness of the President to national issues and challenges, I have no doubt that, at the right time he will take appropriate actions to rejig the core civil service on the basis of competence, capacity, and integrity.

I thank you all for your kind attention!

Goke Adegoroye, PhD, OON

Abuja, 5 March 2024

“Even among thieves there’s honour,” is the sentiment that “criminals have a code of conduct among themselves.” According to grammarist.com, “some aspects of this code of conduct may be to not steal from each other, or to not testify against a fellow criminal to the police.”

Is there such a “code of conduct” among politicians? It’s doubtful, as among politicians – like among dogs – the first to die becomes the meat for the rest of the pack. If there’s really honour among politicians, heads would’ve rolled since the evening of Saturday, February 17 over the botched governorship primary election of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Edo State, to choose a candidate for the September 21 governorship poll.

It’s such a messy affair that President Bola Tinubu’s invited to step in. So, will Tinubu prove the doubting Thomas wrong – coupled with his preachment of equity, fairplay and rule of law – by summoning the political will and courage, cancel the charade of a primary election, and save the APC from a second defeat in four years in Edo State?

Perhaps, the President has shown some spine, as the APC’s National Working Committee (NWC) has declared the primaries “inconclusive” after meeting and briefing Tinubu about the chaotic outcome of the exercise, and “the President expressed concerns at the turn of events, and directed the NWC to ensure that the exercise was concluded,” as first reported by The Nation on February 21.

Hence their tails tucked in-between their legs, the Abdullahi Ganduje-led NWC, after an emergency meeting on February 20, scheduled the completion of the primaries for Thursday, February 22, going by a statement by the national publicity secretary of the APC, Mr Felix Morka, fielding questions from reporters after the NWC meeting.

Morka said: “At its emergency meeting held today, Tuesday, February 20, 2024, to consider the report on the Edo State Governorship Primary Election, the National Working Committee (NWC) deliberated on the report and resolved that the Edo State Governorship Primary Election has not been completed, and has now fixed Thursday, February 22, 2024, for the completion of the Primary Election Process.”

Dr Ganduje and his team didn’t have to await Tinubu’s directive on what to do to rectify the controversial primaries. In a best case scenario, the APC leadership would’ve acted swiftly, called for calm, and given the assurance to members, particularly in Edo State, that it’d look into the primary misadventure through the primary election appeals committee instituted ahead of the exercise by the NWC.

And in a worst case scenario, the party would’ve dismissed the conflicting declarations made – with four aspirants laying claim to winning the primaries – dissolved the Governor Hope Uzodimma-led primary election committee, and fixed a new date for a re-run or fresh primary poll within days, to meet the February 24 deadline set by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

But what did Nigerians – particularly the shocked and distrust members of the APC in Edo State – see and hear from the leadership of the party? A congratulatory message in the night of February 17 from the national chairman, Ganduje, “to the winner of the primaries,” and solicitation for the “defeated aspirants” to “bury the hatchet” and work for party unity to win the Edo governorship.

As of Sunday, February 18, four aspirants claimed that they won the primaries – supervised by Governor Uzodimma, Cross River State Governor Bassey Otu, and five other members of the APC Edo Governorship Primary Election – to choose a candidate for the September 21 election.

The primary election claimants include Hon. Dennis Idahosa, a member representing Ovia Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives, who’s declared as the winner by the Uzodimma committee; and Senator Monday Okpebholo (APC, Edo Central), who’s declared the winner by the NWC-appointed state chief collation and returning officer, Dr Stanley Ugboajah.

The others are Hon. Anamero Dekeri, member representing Etsako Federal Constituency, pronounced the winner by local government returning officers; and Mr Clem Agba, former minister of state for Budget and National Planning, who claims that going by the turnout of voters, he won the majority of lawful votes of APC members, and has threatened legal action to affirm his “victory.”

Tension had enveloped the Edo political landscape when – on the eve of the primaries, two of the leading aspirants – former Secretary to the State Government and twice governorship candidate, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, and former Deputy Governor Lucky Imasuen withdrew from the race, citing the APC leadership’s zoning of the governorship to Edo Central that’s been marginalised in the governance of the state since civilian democracy returned in Nigeria in 1999.

Amid reports that the primaries didn’t hold in virtually all 192 wards of the 18 local government areas of Edo State, results started flying on social media, and coming in droves from the local government collation agents and returning officers into the designated state collation centre in Benin City, capital city of Edo State.

But midway into the televised collation of the primary results, scores of armed political thugs invaded the centre – and in the presence of security operatives, and INEC officials – disrupted the proceedings, and beat up journalists, electoral officials and destroyed laptops and television cameras.

Until that moment, it’s assumed that the primary election was one for all the aspirants. But the Uzodimma-headed committee, perhaps apprised in advance about the hoodlums’ attack, relocated to another venue, where it declared Hon. Idahosa as winner of the primaries, even as only eight of the 18 local government areas’ results had been collated.

Recall that stakeholders in Edo APC had protested Uzodimma’s appointment to head the primary election committee, alleging that he’d do a hatchet job for Senator and former Governor Adams Oshiomhole, who’d openly canvassed – even in a viral video on social media on the eve of the primaries – for Idahosa’s candidacy.

So, Uzodimma, willy-nilly, proved the Edo APC stakeholders right by taking advantage of the mileu caused by the political thugs at the collation centre to announce Idahosa as “winner” of the primaries, despite Senator Okpebholo leading in the results of eight councils declared before the thugs struck.

Still, amid the uproar that greeted Uzodimma’s declaration of Idahosa as the “duly nominated candidate,” Mr Ganduje, in a rather fait accompli statement by his chief press secretary, Mr Edwin Olofu, congratulated the “winner,” and called on the “defeated aspirants” to support him for the unity of the APC.

“I want to congratulate the winner of the Edo State governorship election, I want to equally commend and appreciate Governor Hope Uzodimma’s election committee for their hard work and the transparent manner in which the primary election was conducted,” Ganduje said.

“At this point, I want to call on all the aspirants to bury the hatchet and work for the interest of the party so that our party will emerge victorious (on September 21),” Ganduje added.

Was Ganduje’s congratulatory message to Hon. Idahosa hasty, as alleged by aggrieved  supporters of the “defeated aspirants,” or played into a script written by Comrade Oshiomhole to smoothen the primary path for his “anointed candidate,” Idahosa?

As seen in a trending video 24 hours to the election, as first reported by THISDAY, Oshiomhole claimed that President Tinubu had adopted Idahosa as the APC governorship candidate, a claim debunked by the deputy chairman of the Edo State APC gubernatorial primaries committee and Cross River Governor Otu.

Sen. Otu “categorically dismissed the rumour that President Tinubu has anointed a particular aspirant for the Edo APC gubernatorial primaries,” and “urged party faithful to disregard the lie and vote for their choice candidate.”

“This perhaps fuelled counter-narrative on the eve of the primaries, that the Presidency had settled for an aspirant from Edo Central, to be anointed for equity, justice and fairplay, and that Senator Monday Okpebholo is the anointed candidate,” THISDAY reports.

The same narrative of endorsement led to the withdrawal of Pastor Ize-Iyamu from the race, “with a directive to his supporters to cast their votes for Okpebholo,” and the subsequent withdrawal by former Mr Imasuen, citing the reported APC zoning of the governorship to Edo Central.

In the interim, the national publicity secretary of the APC, Mr Felix Morka, defended Uzodimma’s declaration, and dismissed the affirmation by the chief returning officer, saying the NWC had empowered Uzodimma to make the final return on the primaries.

Morka said: “We wish to state categorically that only the Governor Hope Uzodinma-led Edo State APC Governorship Primary Election Committee is duly authorized to undertake final collation and announcement of results of the Primary Election in the state. We urge all party members, officials in the state, and the general public to disregard the said announcement of results by these unauthorized persons.”

But a letter signed by the APC National Organising Secretary, Sulaiman Mohammad Argungu, appointed Ugboajah as the State Chief Returning Officer, with 18 others as Local Government Area Returning Officers for each of the 18 local government areas of Edo State.

So, who had the authority, between Uzodimma and Ugboajah, to make pronouncement on the outcome of the primaries, as the two were on legitimate duty?

Nonetheless, the Edo chapter of the APC, via its publicity secretary, Prince Igbinigie, describing the conduct of Uzodimma as “most embarrassing, unfortunate and bizarre,” faulted the governor’s “usurpation” of the duties of the local government collation agents and the returning officers for the primaries.

Mr Igbinigie alleged that “upon learning that his preferred aspirant wasn’t winning, Uzodimma singlehandedly relocated the collation centre, and then unilaterally assumed the role of the state’s returning officers without recourse to inputs from the local government collation agents as well as the chief returning officer of the exercise.”

However, Igbinigie said after normalcy was restored at the “recognised collation centre,” with the local government area returning officers and representatives from INEC, the results were declared by Dr Ugboajah, “whose responsibility it is to carry out this function.”

Reeling out the scores by 11 of the original 12 cleared aspirants for the primaries, with Sen. Okpebholo having 12,145 votes, and Hon. Idahosa getting 5,536 votes for the first and second positions, respectively, Igbinigie said: “Therefore, it is the desire of the state working committee to reiterate that Sen. Monday Okpebholo is the duly elected gubernatorial candidate of our great party for the September 2024 governorship election.”

Meanwhile, one of the leading aspirants and court-removed former Governor Oserheimen Osunbor has appealed to President Tinubu to step in and arrest the primary crises allegedly instigated to divide the APC for the PDP to retain power in September. Prof. Osunbor asked Tinubu to:

(1) Cause an investigation to be instituted into the allegation that this sham of a primary election, and the crises it has generated, have been induced by gratification given and received by the principal actors to damage APC and pave the way for the emergence of the PDP candidate in the election.

(2) Order the cancellation of the primary election, which has produced two or four candidates, as it can’t stand the test of legal scrutiny but rather will jeopardize the chances of APC, as there’s been “a brazen disregard of the Party Guidelines, Party Constitution and the Electoral Act, which may prove fatal in the event of litigation.”

(3) Order another primary election to be conducted ahead of the 24th February deadline set by INEC. Different officers should be assigned to conduct the fresh primaries.

Declaring that, “I make this appeal as the most popular aspirant with name recognition and acceptability throughout the length and breadth of Edo State,” Osunbor, at a press conference on February 18 in Ekpoma, Esan West of Edo State, said registered members of the APC across the state came out to vote for their preferred candidate, but “to their disappointment, the election did not take place anywhere that I know of across the 18 local government areas of Edo State.”

“The party officials deployed from the Abuja office of the National Organising Secretary to conduct the elections at the various wards and local government areas of Edo State were kept in hotels in Benin,” Osunbor said, adding, “There is no record or video of any of them preforming their assigned roles in the election at their respective designated points.”

“What we saw on television was not result of election but allocation of votes by some persons in Benin to each of the aspirants. In the end, two candidates have been announced as winners, Sen. Monday Okpebholo and Hon. Denis Idahosa in a primary election that was never held or was not conducted in accordance with the law and guidelines.

“This charade confirms the widespread suspicion that they are labouring to present a weak APC candidate that will be easily over-run and defeated by the presumed PDP candidate during the election. They are not working in the interest of APC but of PDP. We must avoid a repeat of the scenario which led to the defeat of APC in 2020.”

Also on February 18 in Abuja, after an emergency meeting, APC stakeholders rooting for Hon. Dekeri, called on Ganduje and President Tinubu to, “as a matter of honour, discard Governor Uzodimma’s infamous declaration of one Mr. Denis Idahosa, who didn’t win the primaries.”

Spokesman of the forum, Mr Emmanuel Godwin, said Uzodimma wasn’t the chief returning officer for the election, and accused the primary committee of “usurping the duties and responsibilities of local government returning officers in the Edo State primaries.”

Godwin said: “It is unfortunate that Hope Uzodimma, who is not the returning officer in whatever capacity, assumed the position and went ahead to announce Dennis Idahosa when the returning officers were still collating the results.

“We wish to therefore state categorically that the purported announcement is null and void and it should be disregarded in its entirety. Governor Uzodimma lacks the power to usurp duties and responsibilities of local government returning officers in the Edo State primaries.”

In the lead-up to the February 17 primary election Ganduje, and Uzodimma presented themselves as democrats, who wanted things done as laid out in the rulebook of the party. On February 15, at the national headquarters of the APC in Abuja, the former governor of Kano State, inaugurated the APC Edo Governorship Primary Election and Appeals Committees for the direct primary poll.

Specifically on the appeals committee, Ganduje, who vows to reclaim Edo State from the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to expand the coast of the ruling APC in Nigeria, said: “It is a tradition for us to always constitute a body that will undertake an assignment so that at the end of it, we get good results.

“I will like to inform you that the composition of the two committees is a product of the National Working Committee (NWC) in accordance with the constitution of our party. Whatever you do, the contestants are free to appeal. That is why we have an appeals committee, which is like the Supreme Court.”

From hindsight, the Ganduje message was a double-edged sword: Members of the primary election committee should conduct a credible and transparent election acceptable to the aspirants, their supporters, and members of the APC; and whatever the outcome of the poll, the aspirants shouldn’t rock the boat, but appeal for a possible remedy.

Responding, Uzodimma thanked Ganduje and the NWC for the confidence reposed in the members, promised to discharge their assignment with utmost diligence, and stressed that, “Our prayers is that we work hard to justify this confidence reposed in us,” as “our party is a fantastic brand, very popular, and a good product.”
“It behooves on members of our committee to work in harmony with the party’s local leadership in Edo, to bring up a product that will look like our party and is easily marketable in Edo,” Uzodimma said, and urged the APC leadership to pray to God Almighty “to give us the wherewithal to carry out our assignment.”
In the end, did Ganduje and Uzodimma carry out the duty of producing a sellable, marketable and acceptable candidate in accordance with the dictates of the constitution of the APC? No, they did the opposite, in connivance with the local potentate, Comrade Oshiomhole who, from the get go, had primed Hon. Idahosa as his “anointed candidate” for the governorship.
Pre-the primary election, the APC NWC sent officials to the wards and local government areas of Edo State, to authentic the number of actual and financial members of the party – a finding that revealed that only about 42,000 members were qualified to participate in the primaries.

Surprisingly, announcing the results several hours before the completion of collation, Governor Uzodimma ascribed 40,453 votes cast by the verified 42,000 members to Hon. Idahosa alone. Other aspirants’ scores were: Anamero Dekeri, 2,030 votes; Monday Okpebholo, 100; Clem Agba, 100; Osagie Ize-Iyamu, 2; Gideon Ikhine, 700; David Imuse, 400; Charles Airhiavbere, 162; Oserheimen Osunbor, 180; Blessing Agbomhere, 50; Ernest Umakhihe, 2; and Lucky Imasuen, 2 votes.

“This is to certify that Dennis Idahosa, having scored the highest number of votes, is hereby declared winner of the primary election,” Uzodimma said.

In the results declared by Ugboajah, Sen. Okpebholo received 12,145 votes; Dennis Idahosa, 5,536; Afolabi Umakhihe, 2,090; Anamero Dekeri, 1,625; Charles Arhiavbere, 919; Gideon Ikhine, 902; Oserheimen Osunbor, 688; David Imuse, 507; Lucky Imasuen, 503; and Osagie Ize-Iyamu, 383 votes. Clem Agba’s name and score weren’t included.

“This is to certify that Monday Okpebholo has scored the highest votes, and declared winner of the APC governorship primary and thereby declared the candidate of the party,” Dr Ugboajah said.

And in the results announced on Saturday night by Mr Ojo Babatunde for the local government returning officers, Hon. Dekeri got 25,384 votes, while Idahosa received 14,127 votes. No votes were recorded for Okpebholo and nine other aspirants.

If any of the three results declared by the different authorities of the APC Primary Election Committee for Edo 2024 governorship election are considered, only Dr Ugboajah’s declaration merits giving any probative value, having followed the prescribed process of collation and declaration of results.

Besides, no matter their level of popularity and reach in Edo State, no single aspirant among the 10 that made it to the fiercely-contested primary, could secure even 15,000 votes, talkless of outlandish votes in excess of 40,000 from less than 42,000 members that voted. It’s daylight robbery to claim as such!

As the National Leader of the APC – an appellation he’d styled himself for eight years under the Muhammadu Buhari administration (2015-2023) – President Tinubu should show true leadership and cancel the bogus primary election in Edo State, and call for re-run or fresh primaries before the INEC deadline of February 24. Nothing else will assuage the electoral heist perpetrated on February 17! Edo people are watching and waiting, and may not forget their deliberate disenfranchishment on September 21!

* Mr Ezomon, Journalist and Media Consultant, writes from Lagos, Nigeria .