The Accidental Public Servant
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training, disengaged and paid about N24 billion as their severance entitlements. Unfortunately, about
20,000 of these severed civil servants have found their ways back into the civil service, thereby
defeating the clean-up exercise and wasting the monies spent. These 'staff' now draw both pensions
and current pay explaining partly why the federal payroll has ballooned from ₦ 600 billion in 2007 to
N1,600 billion in 2012, nearly three times the size in five years. For the 400 or so parastatals and
paramilitary services, the estimated number of staff to be severed was 75,575 at a cost of about N57
billion. Parastatals reform and right-sizing was to be undertaken jointly by BPSR and the Bureau of
Public Enterprises (BPE). Sadly, this was never fully realized.
Monetization of Fringe Benefits: All benefits-in-kind like free housing, furnishing, car and driver
for various cadres of public servants and political office holders were abolished for ministers,
permanent secretaries and equivalent cadres and below. All government-owned houses except
thirteen classes of official residences were sold to occupants or via public bids. All official vehicles
were discounted by 50% and sold to officials. Other pool and utility vehicles were auctioned in
public bids. Personal drivers, cooks and cleaners were laid off and made personal staff of the
affected officials.
Pay Reform and Medium-Term Pay Policy: The Ernest Shonekan Pay Review Report was referred
to PSRT for consideration and implementation. Shonekan found that public service pay was on
average 25% of private sector pay for the same or similar jobs. A pay increase of 15% went into
effect in January 2007, with a plan to increase pay by 10% per annum but linked to productivity such
that in five years, near pay parity with the private sector would be achieved.
Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System: This is a computerized, biometric platform
intended to provide a reliable and comprehensive database of employees in the public service to
facilitate manpower planning, and eliminate headcount and payroll fraud. The electronic platform
was approved by cabinet in February 2006 and implemented in phases. The first phase covering six
agencies and the central management organizations of the public service went live in April 2007,
saving N416 million from the payroll of the 12 agencies in its first month. Sadly, the vested
interests[113] in the public service have since frustrated its mainstreaming to cover all government
departments and other public service organizations.
Review and Update of Public Service Rules and Financial Regulations: The BPSR
undertook a holistic review of the Public Service Rules and Financial Regulations and
produced a White Paper which was amended and approved by the cabinet on 9th May 2007.
Next Steps in Reforming the Public Service
The next steps are clear. Learn from the recent past, build on foundations laid by PSRT and correct
any errors we may have made. The quality of the public service must be improved by attracting the
best and brightest from our educational institutions and the private sector. This requires reducing the
current pay disparity between the public and private sectors of the economy. To rejuvenate the
service, new blood must be injected at all levels from the academia, private sector and the Nigerian
diaspora, based on merit. This will be impossible unless the aging and un-trainable public servants
take early retirement.
Who can perform in today's work environment without the knowledge of IT, and the ability to use
search engines like Google, social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and messaging tools
via BlackBerry? Any public servant who can’t use the computer -- and there are entire legions of
them-- ought to give way to our army of unemployed young people who can. The number of
government agencies duplicating functions, and their staffing levels, must be reviewed downwards to
enable our nation afford the higher pay that our public servants deserve. We cannot maintain the same
numbers and pay them any higher.
After we left office, another civil service review committee appointed by the Yar'Adua
administration and chaired by Mallam Adamu Fika lamented the low morale and widespread malaise
in the service and observed that the integrity deficits in the Federal Civil Service Commission and the
Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation were responsible for inefficiencies and
corruption that have become pervasive in the service. The Yar'Adua-Jonathan administration lost a
unique opportunity to correct some of these gaps. Sadly, the multiple appointments of heads of civil
service (about five heads in about five years) made continuity of reforms impossible since 2007.
Chapter Fourteen
Covert Battles
“The wish to acquire more is admittedly a very
natural and common thing; and when men succeed
in this they are always praised rather than
condemned. But when they lack the ability to do so
and yet want to acquire more at all costs, they
deserve condemnation for their mistakes.”
– Niccolo Machiavelli
The only way a constitutional amendment allowing a third presidential term would ever be plausible,
from the standpoint of what is politically palatable to Nigerian voters, is if the president pushing for it
does not benefit from it. The only way for this to happen is if the amendment takes effect only upon the
incumbent’s exit from office. This is assuming a critical mass of people actually wants any president
– regardless of political party – to have the option to run for a third term, with all that such an
amendment would imply. From a legislative standpoint, in order to pass any constitutional
amendment, it must gain support from two-thirds of the Senate, two-thirds of the House of
Representatives and two-thirds of the nation’s state assemblies voting in favour of it. The bottom line
here is that anyone trying to game the constitutional system in pursuit of tenure elongation faces very
long odds.
My vested interest in this was precisely that any perceived weakening of Obasanjo’s political stature
that derived from anything, whether it was a grab for a third term, a huge corruption scandal, a key
legislative defeat or any number of other obstacles a Nigerian president faces, was going to inhibit
me from continuing to do my job effectively. Therefore, it was in my best interest to, after abiding by
my oath of office to the constitution, see to it that Obasanjo conducted the affairs of the country in
accordance with the best democratic practices. I also believed that Nuhu, Ngozi and Oby felt the
same way.
There were three possible decision paths Obasanjo could have taken with regard to his tenure. The
first and obvious path was to simply do nothing and play by the rules, serve out his second term, hand
over power to the next democratically elected president, and resume basking in the international
acclaim he enjoyed when he voluntarily stepped down from power in 1979. This was the easiest and
most predictable route for him to take and, frankly, the smartest, and I do not need to lean on hindsight
to make that assessment – indeed, I was saying the same thing while it was all happening. Who the
best person for him to hand power to and which part of the country that person should be from was an
; entirely different matter, which I will take up shortly. For the moment, I am concerned solely with the
structural options that were at hand.
The second route he could have taken was to make a case for a constitutional amendment allowing a
third presidential term for future presidents to come – and not for his benefit. Since Obasanjo is a
‘southerner’, this action would have required significant support from the political leadership of the
south in exchange for very clear and unmistakable reassurances that he was not pulling the wool over
their eyes for the north’s benefit. This action was not theoretically out of the question, in my opinion.
He could have made a plausible case that after spending as much time as he had as president of
Nigeria, he had concluded that eight years were not long enough to take Nigeria where it needed to go
and he did not want to see future leaders of our nation similarly constrained. He could have made this
case and it may make sense to many if it did not appear self-serving. Whether the north and south
would have bought it, I do not know, but on its face, it was a plausible stance.
The third route he could have taken was to push for a constitutional amendment allowing a third term,
applicable to his own tenure. For the reasons stated above, the chance of this path succeeding was not
impossible, but highly improbable, to say nothing of the potential damage it could do to our
institutions. This necessarily meant that any reasonable person directly affected by the outcome of this
action must assume and prepare for failure. This is precisely what we on the economic team decided
to do. Indeed, by August 2005 there were really no loud denials that the Third Term Project was in
full bloom. Though we still had no confirmation, we had access to a document prepared by the Africa
Department (Equatorial) of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, dated 22nd June 2005, which
suggested that Obasanjo “might just be pressed into (amending the Constitution) late in 2006” as the
lesser evil of handing over either to “Atiku, his deeply corrupt Vice President or Babangida, former
military dictator.” The FCO added that “we judge this unlikely, though possible.”
As I narrated in the prologue, we decided that we were going to be outwardly neutral towards “the
Third Term project” yet work behind the scenes to help unravel it in a way that would enable the
president to save as much face as possible. Specifically, we wanted him to be able to still have
enough influence with the ruling party and the populace to have some limited say in who would
succeed him. We believed that once it became clear to him that he was not going to get a third term,
he would select someone who could build upon the foundations we had laid during his tenure in
office
In order for this to take place, the third term initiative had to end as quickly and painlessly as
possible. The more protracted the effort was, the more damaging it would be to Obasanjo and our
administration. Furthermore, we had to be concerned whether a quick end would not leave the
president and his project managers enough time to formulate a clear strategy to punish the country for
not giving them a third term. So the timing issue was two-fold: keep Obasanjo’s dignity and political
capital as preserved as possible, yet also ambush any plans for causing further political problems in
the country going forward. The more time the president and his managers had to engineer after the
effort’s failure, the more time there would be to think about other problems in Nigeria that might be
used as an excuse to declare a state of emergency and remain in office.
Once we agreed on that position, we then had to set about our strategy for achieving this objective,
and we immediately knew that the cooperation of the National Assembly would be instrumental in
ending the initiative. We immediately began a dialogue with Dr. Usman Bugaje of the House of
Representatives, who was the main champion of the group in the House opposed to a third term; we
also approached Ken Nnamani, the Senate president, and Aminu Masari, the speaker of the House, to
ascertain what their sentiments were on the ‘third term’ amendment question. Their attitude was that
they were elected by the parliament to lead the body and they were simply the first among equals –
neither claimed to have a voice except in the respect that they represented the wishes of the majority
of the legislature. Both of them believed the National Assembly was dead against extending
Obasanjo’s tenure and, therefore, it was doomed to fail. We made it clear to them that we were
likewise against the idea, but that we did not want the president to emerge so weakened and
disgraced that he would have no influence on the direction of his succession. We insisted that the
opposition effort be executed in such a way that the dignity of his office would be preserved, though
we knew he would not be able to get away from this completely unscathed.
Every few days, Nuhu and I would go around meeting with various parties we knew to be involved in
the project, both in support and against it. Everybody in the pro-Third Term camp spoke freely with
us as they assumed that we were close enough to Obasanjo, and were therefore trusted members of
the team. Obasanjo himself never said much to us about it, but those involved in the project on his
behalf would tell us openly what was planned and how they were going to address various issues and
challenges. Almost every night between two and three in the morning, after everyone had gone to
sleep, we would drive to Senator Nnamani’s house and the three of us would update one another on
what we had all learned that day. Senator Nnamani would update us on what was discussed in the
legislature and we would inform him of the latest manoeuvrings in the executive branch. We would
also visit Speaker Masari’s guest house on a similar mission.
Engaging the Ex-Presidents
From my end, I wanted to get Obasanjo to at least confirm to me that there was such a project as the
‘Third Term’, but he would not until much later. In an effort to get some kind of conversation or
admission, I asked him at one point what sort of contact he had with any former presidents, and in
particular regarding ‘the proposed constitutional amendments.’ At the time, there were many
provisions to the constitutional amendments on the table, so I just threw the generic term out there to
see how he would respond, if at all. He was silent, so I felt encouraged to probe further.
“If you want to amend the constitution to what appears to be to the detriment of the
northern politicians, you must secure the support of at least seven northern states’
legislatures to enact it. You are not talking to the political leaders and the impression
being created is that this whole thing is just to get you a third term; and no more,” I
said. “The whole thing will be dead on arrival in states' legislatures unless you
obtain their prior buy-in. You can neither get anything through by force or by
deception. It can only be through discussions and negotiations”
“Well, I am in touch with Babangida, but all the other former presidents I am not in
touch with,” Obasanjo finally responded.
“The most important person you need to talk to is General Buhari and followed by
perhaps President Shehu Shagari. If you are thinking of something as significan
t as
this - our very first amendment to the constitution, nothing would be more compelling
than the advocacy of people who have been presidents before you,” I told him. “If
with respect to something as contentious as term limits, one or two of them would say
something like, ‘I wish I had stayed longer’ or something like that, it will help the
legislatures in moving the amendments forward.”
“Well, Buhari does not talk to me.”
“Why not?”
“I do not know, but he won’t even take my phone calls.”
Most of the country’s political leaders particularly from the north were so angry with Obasanjo, first
for ignoring them after many of them did everything to get him elected, and then with the third term
grab they just switched off from him. Certainly, for a few of them, it was like taking dinner off their
table, while for many others it was just a principled response to what they considered Obasanjo’s
disappointing performance in office. At this point, Obasanjo suggested that I would serve as emissary
to the ex-presidents and selected northern leaders to re-open that channel of direct communication -
particularly with Buhari and Shagari.
I went first to meet President Shehu Shagari and His Eminence Muhammadu Maccido, the Sultan of
Sokoto, the leading Muslim traditional ruler in the north. We were on familiar enough terms that
arranging the meeting was no problem, but of course, the moment they see a government minister
approaching them, they would assume he was coming to them to convince them to support an
Obasanjo third term. Knowing this, I began by telling them that the president had sent me to meet with
them.
“Why is he sending you, why can’t he talk to us directly?” one of them asked.
“I do not know, but let me tell you what he would prefer I talk to you about and then