Olaopa Seeks Knowledge-driven Reform In Civil Service As Walson-Jack Presents Books

The Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission ( FCSC), Prof.Tunji Olaopa, has urged knowledge-driven reform in the civil service.

Olaopa made the call in a goodwill message on Tuesday in Abuja during the public presentation of two books by the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mrs Didi Esther Walson-Jack to mark her retirement.

He said that the public presentation of Beyond the Mandate – A Memoir on Leadership and I Planted – A Memoir of Purposeful Service was not just the unveiling of two seminal contributions to administrative history, as it was yet another opportunity for public administrators to pause and reflect on the state of the profession in Nigeria and its reform.

According to him, Walson-Jack has chosen not merely to document her work as a career bureaucrat and her experience and contribution as Head of Service; she has performed an important public service.

Consequently, for him, beyond being personal memoirs, the books are contributions to the continuing conversation about leadership, governance, institutional reform, and the responsibilities that come with occupying positions of authority.

Stressing that reform in the civil service should be driven by knowledge and a constant desire to learn, he referred to Prof. Chinua Achebe who once posed a question around the concern on what African intellectuals read.

He said : “I like to tweak the question by asking, what do Nigerian civil servants read? This is not meant to be a rhetorical question; it is one that goes to the heart of the professionalism of the civil servant as reform imperative . And I dare pose a related question: can we reform a bureaucracy that does not recognise its knowledge and intellectual deficit, and is therefore seen as one that does not read? This is why reflections by an administrative leader like Mrs Walson-Jack invite the civil servant, as thought-leader, to look beyond the immediate demands of the office and to appreciate the larger meaning of public service.”

To him, the reflections of Walson-Jack
challenge administrators to assess the state of the civil service institutional libraries and other learning infrastructure, and ask whether they are being kept up to date; whether they are digitized in a manner that are accessible to the officers, and whether the incentives are there to make the civil servant truly a learner and reader indeed.

Paying tribute to Mrs Walson-Jack, Olaopa said that her commitment had not been limited to performing the job of Head of Service in the last two years. He said that her commitment to leave the civil service better than she met it, in spite of the many constraints, impressed him a great deal.

He said that Walson-Jack’s message to her successor and to the body of civil service administrative leadership in Nigeria is that the real test of leadership is not the absence of challenges, it is the ability to confront them constructively. It is also, he noted, the ability to seek solutions that serve the larger institutional interest and that this is based on knowledge, even if this is reinforced with experts’ support and consultancy services .

Lauding Walson-Jack’s team spirit and collegiality as exemplary, Olaopa said that this played out profoundly in the joint retreat the OHCSF and FCSC held.

He said that the “retreat created a veritable opportunity for both offices to critically examine areas of functional overlaps, including areas of historical conflicts bordering on territory and boundary protection, and at that to seek practical solutions to resolve or ameliorate them. The engagement subsequently paved the way for the establishment of a joint technical committee which studied and interrogated the concerns with a view to strengthening institutional collaboration between the two offices.”

He also acknowledged the extent to which Walson-Jack went to make the point that it is possible to pursue professional excellence, attain peak leadership , and enjoy the stardom and fame that come with it, without sacrificing the home front in the process.

” Indeed, public service can be so demanding, requires spending long hours, constant travels, with limitless competing expectations and frustrations. Yet my sister has demonstrated that it is possible to negotiate the demands of career, marriage, family, and service to God Almighty, with grace and commitment, ” he said.

On the need to build on the legacies she is bequeathing to the civil service, Olaopa said that the most enduring measure of her tenure would not just be the number of policy initiatives and programmes to her name but the extent to which those who come after her are able to build on them and take them to a higher level.

Speaking on the occasion, Walson-Jack traced her career journey from Rivers State to Bayelsa and Abuja. However, she noted that the books did not cover the period she was the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation.

She paid tribute to President Bola Tinubu who she said provided her all the necessary support for her to succeed as the Head of Service. She also acknowledged the role of her husband Mr Nimi Walson-Jack in the success of her career . She noted that her husband read the books twice in terms of his being an active witness of her living and writing them and his reading the manuscripts.

Walson-Jack said that she wrote not based on newspapers in the archives but on actual experience as an active participant. Noting that she did not write to flatter herself but to document her triumphs and trials, she recommended the books to civil servants, those who aspire to be in the public service , and others.