President Muhammadu Buhari has thrown some questions at the civil servants in Nigeria against the background of the launch, today of a capacity building programmes for public servants, Structured Mandatory Assessment-based Training Programme (SMAT-P) and Leadership Enhancement And Development Programme (LEAD-P) at the Old Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

In an address read on his behalf by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at the event, President Buhari that the launching of the capacity building initiatives designed to strengthen the leadership at all levels in the service and build a new performance management system, the fundamental questions are: what is the ethos, the ethical and ideological world view that the service is to deliver?

“To what purpose do we deploy leadership skills and for what ends? How can we measure performance when the objective itself is unclear?”

The President insisted that witout clear answers to these questions, “the service will grope in the dark and take the government and people along with it on a blind-leading-the-blind voyage. So, what sort of country do we envision?

“We want to build a nation with the citizen as its reason for being and thus its sole focus and responsibility. The citizen regardless of station in life must be respected by the governing authorities and treated with dignity. Flowing from these is the imperative that our society must be governed by the rule of law administered by a trustworthy, fearless, impartial and efficient judiciary.”

Buhari blamed the lack luster performance of civil service in the years past on inability of successive administrations to clearly articulate a vision and develop the required capacity to implement various components of the vision.

He said: “Many who mourn the decline of the civil service today from its days as ‘primus inter pares’ in the Commonwealth to one which has earned a reputation for inefficiency, low productivity, corruption and insensitivity to the needs of the public fall into the error of thinking that the problem is a poverty of ideas and capacity on the part of the civil service; whereas, it is the inability to clearly articulate a vision, ensure that the service develops the required capacity to articulate and implement the various components of the vision.” [myad]

Former Nigerian President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has expressed deep worry over the desperation by some young Africans to get to Europe even at great risk to their lives. This was even as he also blamed the European nations and their leaders for not doing anything to help the migrants that had reached the continent.

In a statement he issued in Abeokuta, Ogun State, Obasanjo advised the international community to rise up and find solution to the growing wave of African children leaving their continent for Europe to meet “uncertain future.”

He said that it is a matter of considerable sadness for him to witness the current wave of desperate youths risking their lives to travel to Europe and the futile efforts of the European countries to deal with those who have already set sail or have even reached shores of the European continent.

“Sometime in September 2000, the ex-Libyan leader, Col. Muammar Ghaddafi, called me and brought to my attention, the presence in Libya of thousands of Nigerian illegal immigrants attempting to make their way to Europe.

“These illegal immigrants almost entirely consisting of young men and women, who were prevented from using the facilities of Libya to sail to Europe, had constituted themselves into a menace.

“Some of them were involved in crimes and anti-social activities such as credit card fraud, burglary, drug trafficking and even violent crimes such as armed robbery.

“There was tension between the illegal immigrants and local Libyan communities resulting in the immigrants often being subjected to violent attacks.

“I agreed with Ghaddafi on the need to take immediate action to repatriate the immigrants to Nigeria.  In this regard, I instructed the National Security Adviser to raise a team of officials from the security agencies to proceed to Libya to document all the illegal immigrants from Nigeria.

“I also approved funds for an aircraft to be chartered to evacuate them to Nigeria. The team worked assiduously over a period of two months with the cooperation of their Libyan colleagues.

“They travelled all over Libya and brought out to safety and provided protection to Nigerians who were in hiding for fear of attacks from local Libyan gangs.  A camp was provided by the Libyan authorities where the illegal immigrants were accommodated, provided with basic necessities and documented.

“I also spoke to other West African leaders whose citizens had found their way to Libya and encouraged them to accept responsibility for the repatriation of their citizens back from Libya.

“Those who lacked the capacity to effect the repatriation were assisted by Libya and Nigeria-Libya by providing additional aircraft and Nigeria by accepting the return to Nigeria of citizens of ECOWAS countries, who I then arranged to be transported to their countries from Lagos.” [myad]