Civil service reforms: where Adegoroye went wrong

Over the weekend, a proposal by a veteran bureaucrat, Dr Goke Adegoroye, bordering on civil service reforms, trended. Adegoroye, former Director General of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR) and National Publicity Secretary of the Retired Council of Federal Permanent Secretaries (CORFEPS), in an open letter to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, was widely reported to have highlighted that the country’s civil service is weak and inefficient due to poor leadership and structural flaws.

The report also states that the former DG expressed concern about the absence of administrative and human resources competence and discipline in the civil service and that unless reform is urgently introduced, the decline in public service delivery will continue unabated.

Adegoroye anchored his position on the impending retirement of the current Head of the Federation Service (HCSF), Dame Walson-Jack, which will take place on 27 August 2026, saying the issue of the appointment of her successor raised concerns about the leadership of the bureaucracy, the efficiency and discipline of the country, as well as the overall performance in terms of service delivery.

Its main problem is that for a long time now, successive governments have established something of a tradition of elevating serving permanent secretaries to the HCSF position and other positions from professional executives before career administrators. This, according to him, is the dilemma that leads to the perpetual decline of the public sector.

He agreed that although the Constitution authorizes Mr. President to appoint any serving Permanent Secretary of his choice as an HCSF, such appointments have not produced any expected vision, political performance or results, or the general well-being of the service. He therefore emphasized the need to prioritize competence, discipline and ability over seniority.

HCSF, according to him, entails extensive experience in administration and human resource management. He said: “The OHCSF requires capacity and capability to execute its mandate driven only by national interest, devoid of self-interest. But constitutional and structural limitations require a new approach. That is why I have consistently called for a Federal Public Service Council and the appointment of a Public Service Minister.”

He lamented that “even the National Strategy for Public Service Reforms, developed with the support of the World Bank and led by Professor Ladipo Adamolekun, recommended the appointment of a Special Adviser on Governance and Institutional Reforms. Fourteen years after the adoption of that strategy, no administration has seen fit to experiment with such a recommendation. Compare that to the number of presidential advisers on information.”

Usually, Adegoroye’s observations and recommendations look good on paper; after all, this is what is expected of statesmen like him. However, it is quite surprising that a man of such stature, with insider knowledge of the system and its workings, makes such simplistic suggestions, thereby further introducing an unnecessary skills debate between “professionalism” and “careerism” in civil service administration in the age of artificial intelligence.

Adegoroye holds a doctorate in ecophysiology from the University of British Columbia. He was a lecturer, a corporate actor turned public servant and retired as Permanent Secretary of the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA). Throughout his years of service, he held several sensitive positions in the ministries of Education, Tourism, Culture and National Orientation and the Interior before his retirement in 2010.

But it is important to highlight to Adegoroye some salient issues. For example, over the past four years, none of the best-performing permanent secretaries have emerged from the top administrators he promoted, in his view. This performance is measured against exposure to the same selection processes for both professional and administrative officials, yet the merit-based outcome showed better performance by professionals. It is also important to draw Adegoroye’s attention to the fact that human resource management goes beyond a business/public administration degree, but includes human management and emotional intelligence

Over the years, there is overwhelming evidence to show that public servants from diverse backgrounds, other than mainstream administrators, have ensured that the ethical discipline associated with their professions prevails in service delivery compared to many so-called career administrators. This is a verifiable fact.

It is documented that several senior officials with engineering backgrounds, for example, who have the privilege of serving as permanent secretaries, have ensured, through the Engineering Protocol and Standard, that the government’s objectives of implementing policies and programs for service delivery are achieved at all times.

Additionally, those with medical backgrounds have brought their clinical experiences into human management, ensuring that mandates are respected and that people are cared for whether or not they know those in a position. Medical and other professions also hold administrative positions even in places of first call.

Abandoning seniority in the appointment of Permanent Secretary in the office of HCSF will not serve the interest of the nation, but only the interests of a few individuals who are intent on briefly changing the nation in a digital and dynamic age where experience is needed to lead a bending syndrome.

At this point, it is imperative to ask Adegoroye, as the former Director General of the Office for Public Service Reforms, what reforms he has introduced in the public administration to reflect his current views. If you spend your time in the civil service, traveling through different ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), where do you stand between professionalism and careerism?

It is necessary to emphasize this point because what the retired PS did was to diminish the enormous contributions of the “professionals” who were elevated to the positions of HCSFs, PSs, directors and other key positions in the public administration. He also seems to have forgotten the fact that there were serious cases of underperformance, inefficiencies and leadership weaknesses in the civil service before the reforms instituted by the last three service chiefs.

The Federal Civil Service Strategic Implementation Plan (2017-2020 and 2021-2025), initiated from 2016 and ongoing, is positioning the Federal Civil Service with global best practices with the introduction of Performance Management Systems (PMS), Digitalization and Enterprise Content Management (ECMS). The PMS clearly defines key result areas and key performance indicators in line with the government’s priority areas, ministerial mandates and OHCSF service-level mandates, thus guiding the country’s national development plan. ECMS has eradicated the era of missing files as most files have been digitized and services have been delivered more efficiently with huge savings on paper and printing materials as MDAs provide faster electronic service delivery.

The IPPIS – human resources module allows you to carry out most HR functions online. The current staff audit and skills gap analysis project, approved by the FEC, is a first in the civil service and arose from the need to reposition the civil service in appropriate capacity building to meet today’s civil service.

Is Dr. Adegoroye really up to speed with what is happening in the public service today? Are you also aware of the use of AI tools and ChatGPT essay service in the Federal Civil Service and the global collaboration of the Nigeria Civil Service with the UK and Singapore Civil Service to the extent that the Nigeria Civil Service has hosted two international civil service conferences and has become a place where African countries are already visiting for study tours and peer reviews?

If you think about it carefully: are we saying that there are no “professionals” with equal administrative competence, discipline, experience and ability? The political will underlined by Adegoroye is entirely correct. For appointments, discretions and judgments belong exclusively to the president in this context.

This model of argumentation is also not new. There has been discussion in this country that only professionals should be appointed to head government ministries and agencies. But we have seen in this country where non-professional appointees have performed better than so-called professionals appointed as ministers and heads of MDAs.

In the appointments of his ministers, only a few professionals such as Minister of Justice, Minister of Information, Minister of Works, Minister of Health, etc., were appointed by the president. Did the wonderful FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, need to have a PhD in Federal Capital Administration before doing what he does best – making all FCT residents happy with his mind-blowing infrastructure revolution?

Does this mean that, if appointed Minister of Agriculture or Education today, Adegoroye could not perform well, with all his experience in public service as an administrative giant, simply because he was not trained as an educationist or farmer?

Let’s hit the nail on the head. If a system like public administration wants to function well and fulfill its core mandate, thinking or concluding that only career administrators will make it more efficient, disciplined and free from corruption will be tantamount to self-deception and daydreaming. A system is first and foremost built on structures and, in many cases, while the law may specify suitability, competence and capacity not recognized by “suitability” can be more efficient than prescription.

What Adegoroye said in a chat with journalists before the presentation of his book is an absolute fact: “If we could support integrity, transparency and fairness in appointments, discipline, training and promotion, we would have solved 80% of the problems of public administration.” These are not debates about “professionals” and “career administrators.”

Any Permanent Secretary, who meets the constitutional and civil service provisions and who has vision, courage and is patriotic, can take the civil service to its pinnacle of efficiency, discipline and service delivery, irrespective of its core discipline.

Ukanyi, a public affairs analyst, writes from Abuja