Debate on the Selection of Head of Service of the Federation in Perspective

By Tunji Olaopa

In every administrative system across the world, the selection and appointment of critical officers and officials plays a very crucial role in the overall health of these systems. Indeed, the effectiveness and efficiency of any management system depend significantly on the helmsman who possesses the requisite vision, knowledge, drive and the bureaucratic competences to drive institutional reform and administrative progress. And when this discussion is situated within the context of an ongoing institutional reform process of a public administration system like the one Nigeria requires to manage the successes and consolidation of its democratic governance, then the issue of administrative leadership becomes even more cogent as it positions the public service at the very core of the building of a developmental state that Nigeria needs.

No wonder then that an extensive debate over the succession plan for the next head of the civil service of the federation (HCSF) has focused on why the HE the President needs to take a critical out-of-the-box decision on the modalities that will throw up not just the next HCSF but ground a veritable civil service leadership and administration that will serve as the basis for a functional bureaucratic institution and reprofessionalised civil service that will backstop Nigeria effectively into the fourth and fifth industrial revolutions. That this protracted concern is being championed by the leadership of the Council of Retired Federal Permanent Secretaries (CORFEPS) is even more significant. CORFEPS has over time become a veritable platform for interrogating germane issues revolving around the functionality and future of the civil service, as well as the operational mechanics and dynamics that could make for an efficient civil service.

This responsibility could have become even more grounded if the National Association of Public Administration and Management (NAPAM), the public administration professional body, is currently and sufficiently functional as to also be able to join the fray of discussions and deploy policy-engaged research agenda to deepen the conversation. This is for the sole reason that NAPAM’s expansive membership—drawing on the communities of practice and service of the numerous associations of retired heads of service and permanent secretaries across the states of the federations, public administration researchers, scholars and development workers, etc.—would have contributed an even more rounded and focused debate that pushes the issues beyond the federal civil service to the appointment of heads of service in all the states as well as how administrative leadership in the civil service can complement political leadership. My op-ed pieces over the years have provided the critical grounds for interrogating critical elements of civil service administrative leadership as reform imperatives. I have especially explored for example the generalist-professional distinction as one important item in understanding the transformation of the civil service as a world class institution in Nigeria.

For our present purpose, we take deep reflective direction from the African proverb—the fish rots from the head. This has become a metaphor for leadership vision, accountability and direction. When leadership falters, then the organization weakens and ultimately crumbles. Institutional and administrative reform is therefore ultimately about a leadership that invest frontier ideation, design thinking and policy acumen in visioning the present and future of a new civil service system that constitutes the mechanism for making the state work on behalf of her citizens. Within the Nigerian civil service, the focus and locus of this leadership template is the HCSF. And this is the most cogent reason why the administrative succession plan to install a new one is seen by those who should know to carry such a huge weight for the Tinubu administration and the bureaucracy itself.

In my modest opinion, therefore, the best way to initiate the inquiry into the matter, and beyond the generalist-professional distinction, is the urgent need to rethink the most fundamental questions around the status and operational capacity of the HCSF that enable us to probe deeper into the directions that the system needs to take in terms of a functional, ethical and strategic leadership and the reform processes the leadership needs to drive. The fundamental questions are: (a) Who is the HCSF and what does the job entail? (b) How are the two elite cadres—the administrative and professional officers from which the occupants of the office are selected—related to the challenges of leading the civil service? (c) What are the competencies required of administrative and professional officers to lead institutional reform and provide leadership to the service?

To tackle the nature of the leadership challenge and administrative succession therefore, we need to first understand what the office entails in theory and practice. The HCSF is considered the number one civil servant in the country; indeed, the HCSF is the chief policy adviser to the Federal Government of Nigeria on civil service matters. Given that the HCSF is appointed from among the serving permanent secretaries, s/he is therefore a primus inter pares charged with the responsibility of leading, administering and managing the public service through the permanent secretaries in terms of appointment, posting and performance. The managerial capacity of the HCSF is to be directed at rigorously building and professionalizing the federal workforce through the implementation of training and capacitation policies and programs, including managing the oversight of the governance of the government training institutions and manpower development institutes. The significance of the HCSF becomes glaring given the fact that she drives the civil service modernization plans and institutional reform strategies. The HCSF is the chief visionier and design/implementation officer that oversees how government’s democratic governance policies are translated through performance management into productivity.

Once we achieve this understanding of the persona and status of the HCSF, it becomes very clear why the appointment to that office would be this cogent and rigorous. But more fundamentally, it demonstrates why serious reflection has to go into the selection framework in terms of the processes, procedures and administrative philosophy that must undergird the selection into that office. It must stand to administrative reason that in choosing a visionary public administrator and manager who is in charge of the entire civil service institution, we cannot afford to play the politics of selection that install just anybody for the sake of political and administrative patronage. That will only go to damage the system and keep delaying its urgent transition into a structure at the cutting edge of professional service delivery that will backstop democratic governance and therefore the capacitation of the veritable institutional game changer-engine room in the national development change management dynamics.

The selection, by implication, must also not be undermined by administrative overreach. What does this mean? It means that in the appointment of the HCSF, we must be perceptive enough to look beyond the generalist-professional distinction that the permanent secretaries might fall into, or even the principles of seniority or geo-political balance that often play a very key role in administrative career progression. To be fair, being a generalist or a professional in this role comes with their significant advantages, in so far as merit overrides the choice, over and above the unknowing emergence of the run-of-the-mill street-wise misfits that sometimes feature in the tiny privileged bureaucratic space. A generalist is favored for such a position because of the broad and broadminded capacity for policy coordination and insight that is derived from experiences across diverse ministries and multi-sector coordination. On the other hand, the professional public servant, brings a wealth of domain technical acumen and expertise that is a sine qua non for a data-driven governance that the government requires from the civil service. Unlike the generalist, the professional comes with a specialized albeit narrow problem-solving competence rather than the presumably rounded administrative acumen of the well-groomed generalist administrative officer who are now hard to find really. And yet, each of these cadres, simply so called, lack the depth of what is demanded by that office. Indeed, the office of the HCSF is too important to be left to the limitations of these cadres and the vagaries of these two subsisting criteria for electing the head of the civil service.

The nature of the twenty-first century knowledge society, the demands of the fourth industrial revolution, and the dynamics of a developmental state require that the HCSF must possess a leadership quality and a multidisciplinary capability that is a creative mixture of tactical, strategic and operational competences not limited to any cadre. The HCSF that Nigeria and the Nigerian civil service system need must be appointed not only based on individual merit and moral characteristics, but must fundamentally be able to reflect a critical blend of technical expertise that distinguishes a pubic sector specialist, the reform passion of a change agent, and the project, program and change management acumen. These requirements provide a strategic combination of critical attitude and skills that prepares the HCSF for the leadership and administrative tasks ahead.

To possess the technical administrative skills implies that the aspirant is thoroughly grounded in the bureaucratic skills that underpin the working of government and its administrative system backend, and therefore familiar with public service rules and financial regulations, mechanics of working government business and constitutional stipulations. The candidate, in other words, should be some sort of institutional memory; an achievement that comes from possessing a minimum of ten to fifteen years of engaging and navigating the administrative dynamics of the MDAs. This has to be couple with having a track record of policy formulation experience, including the political skill of defending the policy initiatives at the Federal Executive Council, as well as implementing them.

As a change agent with a passion for reform, it is expected that the incoming HCSF must be sufficiently courageous to disrupt the subsisting bureaucratic inertia that has locked the civil service into an inefficient mode. This means that the candidate for that office must be capable of an innovative and creative vision and strategy that can drive the Federal Civil Service Strategy and Implementation Plan (FCSSIP) through the introduction of modern governance and administrative solution frameworks, from performance-based budgeting, contracting and evaluation to open data geared towards evidence-based citizen-centered service delivery. The persona of the candidate must be thoroughly investigated to determine the ability to prioritize national development goals over base ethnic objectives.

Lastly, no HCSF can ever hope to succeed in the office if she is lacking a significant amount of change management acumen, the absence of which makes the most excellent reform idea very useless. The capacity to implement policies and reform ideas is what transforms the institution into an effective one. The fundamental elements of that change management framework the candidate must possess include the experience of driving and supervising digital transformation like the ones involved in the civil service automation, digitalization and process reengineering, the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) HR modules rooted reprofessionalisation, etc.; stakeholder management capacity; strategic capability for retraining a workforce to adopt twenty-first century competences; and should have the capacity to maneuver away from the status quo reinforcing standard annual evaluation report (APER) in favor of a result-based performance management system.

The candidate to be chosen eventually must therefore come across as a transformational permanent secretary with a track record of managing reforms, possess a clean bill of integrity, has the capacity for managing administrative and institutional crises, possess a history of meritocratic credentials team spirit and mentoring of subordinates. And then a last critical point. Making impacts as the HCSF is something that will take time, if the appointment and succession plan are strategically articulated. Given that the civil service is in a debilitated state, such a HCSF needs a minimum of three years in office. Tenure must therefore be founded on a non-renewable performance-based contract that is conditioned by certified annual performance assessment rather than by age or length of service alone. The succession plan cannot therefore start when the incumbent is just some few months away from exiting the office. A grooming framework serves the purpose, for instance, of providing sufficient time to prepare the appointed candidate to familiarize and understudy the incumbent. The pool of groomed candidates’ cohort makes it possible for the President to replace the incumbent if his performance is not encouraging and, to better plan and manage succession.

• Prof. Tunji Olaopa is the Chairma, Federal Civil Service Commission Abuja