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]
