An Unsung Success Story

ndajika@yahoo.com

 

 

As far as public servants in Nigeria go, Mr. Ahmed Al Mustapha, the Register General of Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), must rank among the oddest. Public servants, by convention, should be seen hard at work, not heard. In Nigeria the opposite seems to be the case. Far from working away quietly and diligently, your typical Nigerian public servant does everything to attract public and media attention to himself, lobby his way to get national honours and even pay good but apparently ill-gotten money to acquire dubious honourary degrees and all sorts of funny titles and awards.

  

Al Mustapha has every reason to attract attention to himself. Since his appointment as the Registrar General of CAC in 2001, he has completely transformed the commission in to arguably the most efficient government agency in Nigeria.

  

Testimonies to that effect are plenty. Last year the commission became the first in Nigeria to obtain the International Organisation for Standardization (ISO) Certification for Quality Management System. The commission obtained the certification barely a year after applying. Similarly it got a thumbs up from the British Department of International Development (DFID) in its report on "Doing Business in Nigeria 2008."

  

The report tracked the number of procedures, costs and time it took for companies in Nigeria to comply with business regulations using four parameters, namely, registering a company, obtaining construction permits, registering property and enforcing contracts. Of these four the DFID scored Nigeria high on only the first. Registering companies in Nigeria, it said, "has become significantly easier" due to changes in the CAC's management style and use of Information Technology.

   

Even more specific than the DFID was the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) office in Nigeria. In its report, "Development Policy Series No. 3" on doing business in Nigeria, it said since 2001, CAC has succeeded in cutting down the steps for registering companies in Nigeria from15 to four. It had also cut down the period of registration from 180 days to no more than five. "Nigeria", it said, "is now meeting or exceeding world class standards in the time it takes to register a business."

  

Praise for the CAC has come not from abroad alone. Such praise, in any case, is not necessarily always a good thing. When international organisations like the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund (IFM) sing praises of governments of developing countries you can almost be sure that those governments are playing Robin Hood in reverse with their commonwealth - soaking the poor at home to pay rich creditors abroad.

  

Similarly when you hear leaders of the rich world praise those of the poor as moderates or describe them as strongmen instead of tyrants you can almost be sure that they are giving their subjects the wrong end of the stick.

  

With the CAC, however, the praise from abroad is not dubious compliment. As any one who has had to register a business since 2001 would testify, the exercise has become a cakewalk rather than the obstacle race it used to be once upon not too long ago.

  

One domestic testimony to this effect was the commission's score on last year's Servicom Index. According to Servicom, a Federal Government agency for the evaluation of the efficiency and efficacy of ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), this index was arrived at by scoring the MDAs for service delivery, timeliness, provision of information, professionalism and staff attitude.

  

On an index ranging from 0 to 4, the CAC scored 2.9 or 72.5%, the highest among all the MDAs. It beat the well-endowed Petroleum Equalization Fund and the Education Trust Fund in to second (70%) and third (67.5%) places respectively.

  

On the above scores alone Al Mustapha has every reason to blow his own trumpet as many  a public servant with far less impressive achievements have done. But then these are not his only achievements.

  

Penultimate Monday, February 2, he added yet another feather to his cap with the movement of the commission to its beautiful and expensive green marble and glass headquarters with its state of the art Information Technology in the highbrow neighborhood of Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Maitama, Abuja.

  

The movement started in 2001 when the commission relocated from its congested Area 11, Garki, temporary site to the more conducive location in Wuse Zone 5. At about the same time it commenced building the permanent headquarters at its present site. The building would have been ready for occupation by last October but for somewhat avoidable delays by some of the sub-contractors.

  

Now that the commission has finally settled in its headquarters, the public can only expect even better than the excellent service it has been delivering since 2001.

  

And so unlike so many a public servant who have been more image than substance, Al Mustapha has every justification to blow his own trumpet. But trust the man to leave it to others to blow even though that may well mean that he will remain an unsung hero of Nigeria's business world.

 

                                              

Citizen Buhari vs UBA 

  

 

He is a citizen of Kano State and a 1978 graduate of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. He joined the United Bank for Africa, a.k.a. the Wise Man's bank, in1980 and was retired 20 years later as a principal manager.

  

For all those years of labour and unblemished service he received a total 0f 623,736.52 Naira retirement benefits after his staff loans and unutilized allowances were deducted from his gratuity of a little over 1.14 million Naira plus 400,000.00 Naira severance grant.

   

Abdurraheem Buhari has been contesting this take home pay since. But from the look of things the wise man's bank has chosen to turn an unwise deaf ear to his cries. Not even after he had written them several times and visited their headquarters even more times and petitioned the Public Complaints Commission has the bank bothered to respond.

  

Buhari, I should admit, is a friend going back to our primary school days in the late fifties and early sixties. In all those years I have known him to be diligent and honest. However, friendship and character are not my only reasons for drawing public attention to his plight. Out there are many Buharis who feel done in by not only the UBA but also by some other banks after giving so much of their sweat and blood to generate the mind-boggling profits they declare year in year out. These many Buharis are right to feel that their sweat and blood are extracted mainly for the benefit of the banks' fat-cat share holders and top management.

  

By way of comparison, I happen to know a recently retired staff of the Union Bank whose benefits were considerably much more than Buhari's even though she left on a much lower grade. Upon her retirement after 20 years of service she was paid a little over 4.74 million Naira, not to mention a deferred pension of over half a million Naira against her 45th birth day, come February 2013.

 

The contrast could hardly be sharper. 

  

Needless to say the UBA and other like-minded banks would do well to re-examine their treatment of their retirees. That is the only path of wisdom and fairness.