NIGERIA AND THE CIVIL SERVICE CULTURE

It is not difficult to spot and the items are as diverse as the problems which plague government work in Nigeria: there are plantain chips; there are clothes; there is always powder of indeterminate origins, tightly sealed in containers.

Those who sell them are Nigerian civil servants. They sit behind their desks, countenances inscrutable, tight smiles escaping only to greet those who have greased their palms in the past, and most nonchalantly, they attend to their duties.

Most times, English, Nigeria`s official language, is jettisoned for the familiarity of native tongues and with the flight of language comes the replacement of competence with nonchalance, and even apathy.

Even before Nigeria`s death dance with unemployment became more feverish, the government was the biggest employer of labour in the country. At the federal, state and local government levels, government employment ensures that millions of Nigerians are able to take home one form of pay cheque or the other at the end of the month. It has been heart-warming to note that in most cases, working for the government guarantees that when age and the passage of time conspire to guarantee that one is unable to work no more, some form of support by way of pension and its appurtenances await.

It is sobering that over the years, workers, especially in some states and local governments have experienced the excruciating agony of working for months without being paid their salaries. Those workers, many of whom are breadwinners in large families, are often left at the mercy of corrupt and clueless state and local governments who because they shockingly fail to get their priorities right put others through inexcusable difficulties.

There is an unavoidable question of what the civil service in Nigeria has become. For one, the assurance of monthly salaries keeps the ghosts of uncertainty away. There is at least the guarantee that at the end of the month, there is something to take home.

But with this guarantee has come the emergence of comfort zones where some civil servants feel they can do whatever they want with little or no consequence; there is the generally poor disposition to work; then there is the hydra-headed corruption that waltz through the civil service like a colony of termites chewing through a wooden edifice. Collapse is usually only a matter of time.

Corruption has become an existential problem in Nigeria, and a lot of it is found in the civil service. It manifests in the varying sums patrons of government services have to part with to move their files from desk to desk; it manifests in the kickbacks civil servants draw off the back of bloated government contracts; it manifests in the shabbiness with which government services are dispensed. This is in spite of the fact that one always has to pay through the nose for them.

Nigeria`s institutional corruption has not existed in a vacuum all these years. It is reposed in those who man these institutions. In this wise, wherever one turns to in the country, corruption has a foot soldier. The net effect is a gradual but granite disintegration of Nigeria`s core values and institutions.

Because nothing has worked in the country for many years, those who occupy public offices and those who work in the civil service take to their jobs with as much apathy as they can summon. There is a pervasive culture of nonchalance which when combined with the invidious corruption in the country has reduced almost everything to dust.

There is in place in Nigeria`s civil service a work ethic that is difficult to describe as anything other than poor. This is a fallout from the pervasive culture that emphasizes nothing other than benefits even undeserved ones as well as pointing out many sharp corners and washing away the consequences for cutting them.
As Nigeria continues to nurse a long-drawn dream for economic prosperity and efficiency, Nigerian civil servants must examine themselves and the manner in which they work. To move the country forward, they must ensure that they are free of blame.

Kene Obiezu, Abuja