Ever since President Donald Trump sounded his alarm on the possibility of sending United States troops into Nigeria ‘guns-ablazing’ in response to alleged ‘Christian genocide’ in the country, this column has focused severally on what I have described as the mercurial American leader’s wake up call or challenge to Nigeria and Africa.
In his seemingly unhidden disdain for weak, mostly poorly governed, inexcusably poverty-stricken and abysmally wretched African countries, Trump may not be the unbridled racist many perceive him to be after all. His may just be a normal reaction of the strong, mighty and wealthy of the world to an otherwise abundantly endowed continent that has no business with the kind of dehumanising poverty with which she is identified.
It is another testament to the tragedy that is Africa that Uganda’s ruling strongman for over four decades, Yoweri Museveni, despite his advanced age, has just won another landslide electoral victory to lead his country for another seven years. In the emergent post-Trump global order, strength is might. Established rule-based behaviour based on decency, honour and civility has lost resonance. In the new world being born before our very eyes, democratic deficits in Africa and kleptocratic heists of governance leading to massive citizen impoverishment and disenchantment become existential threats to national sovereignty.
The restoration of democratic credibility, ethical governance and economic progress that impacts millions positively among the Wretched of the earth, thus becomes the immediate imperative response in Africa to an essentially amoral ‘Trumpian’ philosophical outlook on global governance.
Such a revolutionary transformation in the management ethos of the public sphere in Africa is indeed a necessary condition for black countries with the requisite wherewithal to acquire the deterrent lethal armoury that will make great powers with a Machiavellian eye on the continent’s rich trove of rare minerals and other resources to think twice before leaping on her like lethal carnivores even as they mouth pious declarations of ‘civilizing’ intent.
Indeed, renowned political scientist and international relations scholar, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, alongside another scholarly African legend, Professor Ali Mazrui, had made persuasive cases, long before Trump, for what has been widely called the ‘black bomb’ to better facilitate the emergence of a global deterrent racial balance of terror. This may not necessarily be as outlandish as some perceive it. Neither will it require superhuman feats of cerebral heroism. Indeed, the human resource base already exists for such a feat in Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt and many African countries.
What is urgently needed is for a sufficient number of African societies to summon the organisational efficiency, leadership discipline, elite cohesion, and solidifying democratic culture and political stability needed to shoulder such a grave responsibility.
Interestingly, while we tend to focus excessively on our flaws and negative traits, there is much, unfortunately imperceptible, good occurring in different spheres of our society in Nigeria, such as an appreciation and cultivation of merit that is a necessary condition for the nurturing of the technocratic culture that must be the basis for a nuclear-powered society.
For instance, in his 2016 Convocation Lecture at the University of Ibadan, in which he made a vigorous case for ‘Nigerian Exceptionalism’ in the country’s desired ‘Quest for World Leadership’, Professor Akinyemi referred to a commentary by the CNN on the launching by the National Space Research Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) of five satellites into space since 2003. The professor quotes CNN as reporting that “The NASRDA has launched five satellites since 2003, with three still in orbit delivering vital services. The most recent NigeriaSat-X was the first to be designed and constructed by NASRDA engineers, and more advanced models are in development”.
And in the words of Professor Akinyemi, “NASRDA has close to 500 skilled and trained staff, some up to PhD level. The programme has ambitious goals. By 2018, it hopes to build Indigenous satellites, by 2025-2028, it hopes to build a national spaceport and develop an indigenous space launcher, and by 2030, it intends to put a Nigerian astronaut into space. These are lofty goals that have received international acclaim”.
No less critical than charismatic and visionary political leadership at the commanding heights of societal governance are merit-recruited and driven technocrats at the driving seats of bureaucratic structures that propel scientific, technological, artistic, industrial, educational and other attainments to the level of genius that move polities forward at a geometric rate. In choosing Professor Tunji Olaopa as his pick to serve as Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC), President Bola Tinubu demonstrated a commitment to merit as the underlying imperative for the fundamental reforms that are the defining essence of his administration.
This meritocratic disposition of his leadership style is evident in the outstanding productivity of various agencies from General Buba Marwa’s NDLEA to Mr Tunji BELLO’s FCCPC to Professor Eghosa Osagie’s NIIA to Hafsat Bakarat’s NFIU to Yemi Cardoso’s CBN, Professor Oloyede’s JAMB or Dr Kayode Opeifa’s NRC, to name a few.
An accomplished political scientist, Professor Olaopa obtained his MSc and PhD degrees in public administration and has gone on to establish his reputation as the leading scholar on public sector reforms in Nigeria and Africa. Rising to the apex position of Federal Permanent Secretary in the Federal Public Service, he has no less than two-score highly regarded scholarly books on different aspects of public service reforms in Africa.
In a write-up to commemorate two years of Professor Olaopa in this demanding seat, another noted scholar who works with and observes him at close quarters, Dr Paul Onomuakpokpo, noted that “Under Olaopa, there is the overarching quest to bring the best and brightest to the civil service, without undermining the federal character principle. His credibility has invested his leadership with an imprimatur of believability. Through credible promotion examinations, the career progression of the most qualified civil servants is guaranteed. Civil servants are no longer apprehensive that they need to look for millions to bribe their way to rise to the top. Olaopa has demonstrated the courage to stop the promotion of those who do not merit it, no matter the pressure from different quarters. The avenues for questionable promotion examinations, such as leakage and sub-standard examination questions, have been blocked. This has saved the commission from wasting time, money and other resources on court cases”.
Continuing, he states that “Those who fail no longer bother to contest the grades they have been awarded as they rest assured that the system is now credible. Olaopa’s streak of firsts at the FCSC has received a boon with the introduction of the computer-based test ( CBT) mould for the conduct of recruitment and promotion examinations in the civil service. This novelty imposes on civil servants the salubrious necessity of computer-savviness that is reflective of technological developments in a world where those who have demurred at bracing for artificial intelligence and others are faced with the present danger of consignment to corporate and professional backwaters. It has also shrunk the space for the manipulation of examination results that impugn the credibility of the commission”.
Remarkably, Olaopa has been able to put into practice his profuse theoretical adumbrations on the imperative of civil society reforms while maintaining harmonious relationships with the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HOCSF), Mrs Didi Esther Walson Jack (OON) and other leadership cadres of the Public Service, many of whom are change agents in their own right.
A significant development under Olaopa’s leadership of the FCSC has been the resuscitation for two years running of the annual meetings of the National Council of Civil Service Commissions of the Federation; an exercise that had been in abeyance for over a decade. In the concluding part of this piece, we will look in detail at the deliberations of the last Council which held in Umuahia, in Abia State, its exhaustive communique and why its conclusions are germane to the emergence of Nigerian and African public services that can be the backbone of emergent flourishing, vibrant and virile African countries no more vulnerable to the bullying and hectoring of self-interested external self-proclaimed saviour -giants with feet of clay.
Culled from The Nation
