Buhari Plans To Make Civil Service ‘Change Agent’ – Akande

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The government of President Muhammadu Buhari is here to turn the civil service into a workforce that will deliver the change that had been promised, a government official said on Friday.

While giving his opinion on the current government’s effort to end corruption in the civil service sector, the Senior Special Assistant to the Vice President on Media, Mr Laolu Akande said the Nigerian Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo had had talks with civil servants to tell them how important it was that they should be agents of change.

Mr Akande further said that the current administration had come to set things straight, to inspire the civil service and to fire their imagination.

On the impact the administration’s strategy has made so far, he said: “We all know the impact that corruption have had in virtually every sector and every arm of government. It doesn’t require an inquiry to find out exactly what is going on.

“The attitude of the President is to say to the civil service, as we’ve been saying to other sectors, that change has come. It is time to think big, to imagine great things and to look beyond the obstacles. Whatever may have been responsible for the problems of the past, the time has come for us to make a change.

“We are not talking of any restructuring now, but we are saying that we want the civil service and other sectors of the Nigerian State and economy to begin to have the mindset that great things will happen.

“We require all hands on desk, we need to terminate corruption and we are also going to do all these things together”.

Professor Osinbajo had earlier decried the decline of Nigeria’s Civil Service over the years, blaming it on the inability of past administrations to clearly articulate a vision and develop the required capacity to implement various components of the vision.

He said: “Many who mourn the decline of the civil service from its days as ‘primus inter pares’ in the commonwealth to one which has earned a reputation for inefficiency, low productivity, corruption and insensitivity to the needs of the public, fall into the error of thinking that the problem is poverty of ideas and capacity on the part of the civil service; whereas, it is the inability to clearly articulate a vision, ensure that the service develops the required capacity to articulate and implement the various components of the vision”.