Obasanjo, IBB regimes killed civil service – Asiodu

Written by Duncan Wednesday, 14 October 2009

Former Permanent Secretary Philip Asiodu said the military regimes of Olusegun Obasanjo and Ibrahim Babangida killed the nation’s civil service with their poor reforms.

Asiodu told Daily Trust in an exclusive interview that the Murtala/Obasanjo military regime started the destruction of the civil service in 1975 and was completed in 1988 by the Babangida regime.

He said the introduction of tenure for permanent secretaries and directors was an effort aimed at addressing the situation where there are so many directors and permanent secretaries who have been there for upward of 10 or 15 years without room for others to advance. Asiodu said “In a well managed civil service, as graduate in those days, may be at the age of 24 to 25, and passing through stages, by the time you are ready to become permanent secretary, you probably have done 25 years in service and ready to retire after two years.

“In practical step and in a well settled and managed service, PS tenure is neither here nor there, because before you become a director you probably would have put in so many years may be up to 20 years. In our time the system allowed for high flyers, people were so brilliant then and they can jump grade.”

He said there have been attempts to address the problem in the service but has not been fruitful. He also said that “Federal character can never and should not mean appointing anybody to a position he is not qualified to occupy. Federal character, yes we must spread the net wide in recruiting people but against specified qualification. If you don’t have it federal character or no character you should not be recruited. And once you are recruited, you must go through the structured training, examination, test and interview to select the best materials because only the best materials can advance Nigeria forward. It is this retrogression into mediocrity that has made Nigeria to lose its place in the world”.