The Federal Civil Service and Failure of National Integration

The Federal Civil Service and Failure of National Integration

Abdullah Musa

Malam Adamu Adamu, a columnist with Daily Trust newspaper, had cause to start a series by title of: How to kill the civil service (see Daily Trust of 5^th November, 2011). As is the character of Nigeria, many readers of newspaper will not even spare the time to read what he had to say. From his name you know he is a Northerner. From his passionate defense of Iran and castigation of Israel in his previous discourses, you know he is a Muslim. The only other person who might condemn Israel will be the South African who knew the role Israel played in the attempt to perpetuate apartheid (birds of the same feather you might say).

Malam Adamu had an axe to grind with the former Head of Service of the federation, Mr. Oronsonya (I hope I got the spelling right). According to him Mr. Oronsonya was not fit to be the Head of the federal civil service. He gave evidences to show that in fact, the said person could even have been a fraudster, in that he claimed to have qualifications for which there is no proof. It will be up to the federal civil service to verify the accusation since Mr. Oronsonya had earlier been quoted as saying that the accusation was too ridiculous for him to respond to. (Can it be akin to someone saying the Pope is not a Christian?)

What Malam Adamu found more damaging was that he found the totality of Oronsonya’s tenure as simply an ethnic agenda: to wipe out Northerners from the key positions of the service. He gave statistics to back his assertions. There may be more nails in Malam Adamu’s bag with which to nail Oronsanya’s ‘coffin’. Interestingly, what Malam Adamu considers as failure will be what others from Oronsonya’s zone might consider as success: taming or maiming the Hausa-Fulani! The power rivalries between ethnic groups in Nigeria had been exacerbated by the return of democracy, (from 1999 onwards).

Power shift had really been defined by practice to mean total power shift, or put simply the disempowerment of Muslim Northerners and the empowerment of Christian Southerners. There are many things that ought to be re-negotiated if we accept it as normal that someone may want to put a segment of Nigeria to disadvantage, and yet occupy a position which ought to be national in character. Would it not be the height of insanity if a brigade in the military were to be at battlefront and some members felt that they had to wipe out some others from the brigade before they started killing the ‘real’ enemy?

Times without number Nigerians (Core North; South West; South East; South-South etc) have shown that they do not agree they are Nigerians. They are, simply put, nations within the Nigerian contraption. It might be this reason plus a host of others that inform the acceptance of the ‘spoils system in the operation of the federal civil service, and even at state levels. Since it has become the norm to plunder resources, or to divert them to personal use, it had been alleged so many times that Ministers employ ‘ethnic cleansing’ in dealing with Directors who are not their kinsmen or women.

We are not saying that they order the killing of such ‘enemies’, but what they do is to simply shunt them out of the main operating theatre of the ministry. And to the Nigerian civil servant, the salary surely is not the reason why she or he works. Since the nation is there to be pillaged, the moment you are not on the gravy train it means you are simply atrophying. If we want an example of this bureaucratic ‘ethnic cleansing’, one would refer to the composition of a committee charged with implementation of the federal Entrepreneurship Scheme which Daily Trust lauds, in which there is no Northerner, even though three or more government agencies are involved.

Nigerians had been at war with each other since pre-independence; and fifty years later, they have not seen any reason as to why they should stop it. Malam Adamu should simply understand that Mr. Oronsonya was sent to the bureaucratic battlefield to decimate as many Northern bureaucrats as possible. The qualification he needs to succeed is neither ACA nor ACCA, but political support from his tribe, and a conviction that theirs is a holy war. When I said many things ought to be re-negotiated if an agenda such as the one adopted by Oronsonya is accepted and rewarded, I meant things like Nigerian passport, and even Nigerian boundary.

If the map of Nigeria were to be correctly drawn, it should show certain disjointed parts. The core will of course be Abuja. Therein, all Nigerians are equal: the Igbo will not be hunted down and killed, neither will the Hausa, nor the Yoruba. The other disjointed parts will be the Military barracks scattered across the country, and to a lesser degree, the Police barracks. All other areas are enemy territories: a Hausa man ought to have obtained a visa and a residence permit before venturing to stay in Jos or its environs. This should be the rational path of all other tribes when they ventured into territories where they are not the majority.

But so far Nigerians have evaded the naked truth: Nigeria is simply the creation of others; it is not the creation of Nigerians. It is a place which elites have turned into No-man’s Land, which they plunder at will while using the lives of common men and women as cannon fodder. The jostling, the brinkmanship, will continue: do-me-I-do-you! There is nothing henceforth Malam Adamu that will be normal or sacrosanct. We are all dispensable at the altar of ethnicity, greed, and irrationality. Whoever is not an ethnic gladiator in Nigeria is insane. But that will lead surely to disintegration you may say. But of course! A drug addict enjoying his high is oblivious of the fact that he is on the path of destruction. But will he listen to your sermons while inebriated?