As a push back to critics of President
Muhammadu Buhari’s delay in constituting a cabinet about four months
into his administration, the President reportedly retorted that
ministers were “noise makers” and the job of running the bureaucracy was
actually carried out by civil servants; so, why the hurry?
Indeed, the delay in forming the cabinet
was essentially because Buhari was consulting with permanent
secretaries who trooped in droves, into Aso Rock to keep our newly
minted President abreast of the business of governance or statecraft.
So, at the inception of Buhari’s regime,
it was not uncommon to see top civil servants in photo opportunities
splashed out in both print, online and broadcast media platforms, in
company with Buhari, clutching files and grinning from chin to chin like
Cheshire cats to the consternation of politicians, especially those
from the All Progressives Congress who could not wait to climb into the
ministerial saddle.
Back then, President Buhari reposed so
much confidence in Nigerian civil servants that he was not in a hurry to
appoint ministers.
However, civil servants being the wily
crop of people that they are, must have regaled the President with tales
and fables about officialdom and their critical role and inevitability
in running the bureaucracy that he became so sucked in and enamoured to
the extent of regarding civil servants as “blue-eyed princes” while
labelling ministers as “noise makers” .
At that time, civil servants, who some
aggrieved Nigerians derogatorily tagged “evil servants”, because of
their nefarious antecedents, had not shown him their true colours.
Today, Mr President will easily join the
numerous Nigerians who have had close encounters with the “head
honchos” in the bureaucratic establishments, by also calling them “evil
servants” since he now has a taste of their evil plots evidenced by
their reported resistance to Zero-based Budgeting and the secret
planting of a whopping N1.6 tn into the 2016 budget.
Before President Buhari, many public
servants had fallen victim of civil servants’ economic debauchery. At
the level of the legislature, let’ s take a look at the case of former
Senate President, Adolphus Wabara, who was caught in the web of budget
manipulation for a fee and subsequently lost his Senate Presidency on
account of his indictment. How about a former Aviation minister, Stella
Odua, who got fired from the cabinet of former President Goodluck
Jonathan for purchasing two armoured BMW cars for an outrageous sum?
I can wager a bet that for every
occupant of political office found guilty of corrupt enrichment, more
often than not, they were instigated and encouraged by civil servants
working with or under them. This is because, over the years, civil
servants have mastered the art of pulling the wool over the eyes of
political office holders and their permanency on the job (35 years) as
opposed to public servants (ministers or Directors-General) who serve
only one or two term of four years each and often less, gives them the
undue advantage to perfect their devious art which is why they exhibit
the characteristics of the mafia.
A former Minister of the Federal Capital
Territory, now governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai, was so keenly
aware of the evil capacity of civil servants that he broke the mode of
engaging civil servants as Special Assistants but instead sought
exemption to source his aides from the private sector in order to
achieve his development goals.
The beautiful city that he wove Abuja
into, is a testimony to el-Rufai’s sidelining of civil servants to
deliver on the mandate (as a man schooled in the art of building) of
creating a modern city that was the envy of many visiting prime
ministers and presidents.
It beats me hollow that the former FCT
minister who is a close confidant of President Buhari did not alert him
when he was romancing and hub nubbing with civil servants.
It is to the credit of “eagle eyed”
legislators and more especially, civil society organisations who
dissected the budget to sniff out the potential heist embedded in the
2016 budget by civil servants.
Truth is that, civil servants which
constitute less than five per cent of Nigeria’s population, actually
consume about 70 per cent of our country’s income, according to the
immediate past Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, and now the Emir
of Kano, Muhammad Sanusi 11. The giant sum of budgeted funds consumed
by civil servants is in the form of salaries and emoluments, which is
why Nigeria’s budget is tilted abnormally more to recurrent expenditure
and less to capital projects, yet they are the biggest perpetrators of
fraud. Issues of corruption in the civil service in Nigeria have been
well-documented.
For instance, in 1975, after the late
General Murtala Mohammed took over from General Yakubu Gowon as head of
state, about 10,000 civil servants were sacked over corruption matters.
According to the Pius Okigbo report, between 1988 and 1994, some $12.5bn
in government revenue was stolen by civil servants.
Unsurprisingly, all the pension funds
fraud, typified by the recent indictment of an assistant director in the
civil service commission, Yakubu Yesufu, who frittered away N32bn and
Abdulrasheed Maina, chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension
Funds, who could not account for about N195bn under his care, are clear
reflections of the level of involvement of civil servants in corrupt
practices.
To be concluded
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