The recent altercation between the Minister of Works, David Umahi, and ministry workers should remind President Bola Tinubu of the imperative of undertaking sweeping reforms in the public service. While the minister had locked out workers for lateness, protests compelled him to seek accommodation with the irate civil servants. Beyond that drama, the public service is in crisis; Tinubu should overhaul the broken system.

Umahi had arrived early at the ministry’s headquarters in Abuja to find that only a few workers had turned up well after the official resumption time. He ordered the gates shut and latecomers were forced to loiter outside.

But this attracted aggressive protests. The workers insisted that transportation costs had risen astronomically, and buses and taxis were hard to find. Both sides called a truce.

But the issues of Nigeria’s public service and its relevance in its present form remain. Structured into Ministries, Departments and Agencies, the civil service of any country is the administrative arm of the government “responsible for formulating and implementing government policies, programmes and projects.”

For these activities to be well executed argues a UK-based think tank, Institute for Government, “they need to be done by people with the appropriate training and expertise, and for government to operate effectively, it therefore needs a workforce with a range of different skill sets.”

To the dismay of experts and most Nigerians, the country’s federal, state, and local public services hardly exhibit these skills.

Though the rot began decades ago, today, the federal civil service is huge: over 1.5 million staffers are on the payroll. According to critics, it is bursting with excess staff, incompetent, corrupt, and mostly idle. It is politicised, merit has been compromised, nepotism and mediocrity prevail, and rules are broken with impunity.

Past attempts at reforms have failed to deliver a civil service that can drive national development. Tinubu has acknowledged that the system is oversized.

Previous reform programmes include the National Strategy for Public Service Reforms, Bureau of Public Service Reforms, and the introduction of e-government initiative. All have faltered.

The cherished values of the civil service – impartiality, objectivity, integrity, and honesty– have collapsed. Efficient bureaucracies drove development initiated by Nigeria’s First Republic regional governments.

In the 1980s, UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher introduced sweeping reforms that included decoupling some services from the public service into the hands of the more efficient private sector.

A 2019 survey showed New Zealanders have increasing trust in, and satisfaction with their public service. Singapore’s civil service is reckoned to be one of the world’s best.

Tinubu must take the painful but necessary step of overhauling the civil service to make it more cost-effective and efficient. This task needs to be undertaken swiftly, resolutely, and objectively.

He should update and review the 2012 Oronsaye Report that recommended slashing the number of MDAs. With no thought to available resources or prospects, successive National Assemblies and presidents have recklessly created over 100 new agencies since then.

Tunji Olaopa, a former federal permanent secretary, has urged the government focus on achieving cost-containment through rationalisation, and a smaller, flexible, and efficient civil service; re-professionalised and with the skill-competency required for democratic governance and service delivery.

A former UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, said, ‘’The sheer scale of the challenges that still face us – and the need to hold our own in a competitive world – mean that we need to change the way government works. It needs to be sharper and quicker; to be more agile, more focused on getting results.” Tinubu should run with this wisdom.

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