By Ruth Ogbonnaya
Nigeria’s youngest Presidential hopeful who is flying the flag of the Accord party, Prof Christopher Imumolen has assured that he will make wholesale reforms in the country’s civil service his topmost priority when he gets the opportunity to become Nigeria’s president in next year’s general elections.
According to the erudite scholar and philanthropist, Nigeria’s civil service has for decades failed to live up to its assigned constitutional role as the engine that runs government, and has continued to wallow in indolence and corruption.
“Our civil service is typified by excruciating bureaucracy that unnecessarily slows down the business of government at all levels. “The country’s civil service hasn’t exactly earned plaudits over the years.
“That is why it will be to the benefit of the people”, he said.
Prof Imumolen pointed that If the civil service is reformed and sanitised to make it more patriotically productive, it would get attuned to the demands of an incoming reformist government, like the one he is intending if he gets elected president.
According to Professor Imumolen, the success or failure of any government depends on the civil service.
“Any government that wishes to fully deliver on its pre-election promises must not overlook the role the service could play in ensuring that, because they are the oil that lubricates the engines of government”, he said.
Professor Imumolen further averred that;
“the civil service as presently constituted can not fully fulfill its constitutional role of making government work effective, because of age-long habits that needs to be curbed.
“A civil service populated by workers who got there on a man-know-man basis, a civil service where indolence and official corruption is the order of the day cannot make any government succeed.
“That is why, if I get the people’s mandate to become president, I’ll do all in my power to ensure that that status quo doesn’t remain.
“We are going to review the process of recruitment into the service.
“We are going end the era of file-carrying and institute a proper system to ensure transparency and accountability in the running of government business.
“We are going to fully digitalise the whole civil service structure to make it more effective and result-oriented.
“Staff would be made to undergo computer training and retraining to bring them to the level we want them to be in the new regime of prompt and efficient service delivery.
“In my time as president, it will no longer be business as usual as only those who are patriotic and progressive-minded, and who have the overalls for interest of the country at heart will be allowed the opportunity to work in the civil service”, Imumolen said.
