Towards Effective Civil Service
Constitutionally speaking, civil service is an engine room of effective governance. No democratic society can forge on without better and effective civil service. A civil servant by his training and re-training is a public administrator whose statutory functions or responsibilities allows to implement government policies and programmes. Therefore, the success of every government depends on the effectiveness of the civil service. Civil servants played significant roles during the military regimes in Nigeria, as soldiers did not train in the art of public and political administration. Civil servants were given constitutional responsibilities to assist the military officers in running the affairs of the country.
Recently, studies shown that the Nigeria’s civil service is depreciating on daily basis, as civil servants exhibit non-challant attitude towards the running the affairs of the state.
In Rivers State, civil servants tend to abandon their duty post for private businesses.
Officially, in civil service work resumes daily by 8.00am and closes 3.30pm, but most civil servants go to their place of work or duty by 12noon and leave before the official closing time of 3.30pm. In some local government councils, civil servants absence themselves from duties for weeks or months without any cogent reason or excuse.
Such civil servants only appear on their duty post on the pay day and shortly after collecting their salary disappear into thin air. Civil servants in Rivers state are lazy and unresourceful. The civil service system is faulty and needed to be resuscitated. If not, how can a right thinking civil servant who is paid with the tax payers’ money will not go to work for months.
It is sad that there is no discipline any longer in the civil service as every civil servant behaves anyhow he or she likes. This is not the dream of the workforce bequeathed to us by the British Government on 1st October, 1960. A civil service where workers will falsify academic qualifications, age declaration and other relevant credentials is not healthy in the administrative development of any state.
We urge the Civil Service Commission and other relevant authorities to instill discipline amongst civil servants to bring an effective civil service in Rivers State. ####
