Malam BALARABE ABBAS LAWAL was a lecturer at the Administrative Staff College of Nigeria (ASCON), Lagos, long before becoming the Secretary to Kaduna State Government (SSG), a position he has been holding for close to five years now. In addition, he also chairs the Institutional Development Council, one of the five Policy Councils of the Malam Nasir El-Rufai administration. In this interview, he gave insights to what the council has been doing and a rare perspective on how Kaduna State’s civil service is structured.
What does the Institutional Development Council aim to achieve, which the mainstream organs of government are not doing? Which gap is it trying to fill?
To start with, the whole idea about dividing the State Executive Council to create sub councils, is to try and bring in more people to participate in decision making. The State Executive Council is limited to only Commissioners and some few Advisers and a few heads of agencies. So, the Government decided that the best way to bring in more people, particularly for decision making, is to make it as open as possible. And the only way to do that is by creating these sub councils that will reduce the burden of the Executive Council and try to improve on the contents of the decisions taking place, in terms of inputs from many agencies and individuals that meet in those sub councils.
The sub councils are five and one of them is the Institutional Development Council, which is basically expected to look at the various institutions of Government. We have so many of such institutions and so many Agencies, Ministries, Parastatals and Companies of Government that have been created over a long period of time. Many of them are doing what they are supposed to do, but some of them are not. And some of them are moribund. The whole essence of the Institutional Development Council is too look at the entire structure of Government, see how it is operating, see how the institutions are functioning and determine whether they are functioning how they are supposed to, or not.
The first thing we did was to try to create committees that will have a picture of the entire institutions of Government that we have in Kaduna State. And there were disparities. Some said we had a lot of such institutions, some said we had 72. But by the time we went through the entire structure, we found that we had 89 different agencies and structures. Out of them, we are trying to find out what they are doing. And above all, to find out whether or not they are really performing their tasks.
Like any Government, there are various political appointees in this administration and some of them may not have prior working experience in the civil service. What efforts did your council make, to ensure that these appointees know the inner workings of the civil service, in order to achieve synergy for optimum performance?
Initially, when most of these people were appointed, there was a retreat where we had a whole day to take them through what they ought to do; a sort of linkage between them and the bureaucracy. We started with the Commissioners because they are going to operate within the structures of the Ministries and the general bureaucracy. They have to work seamlessly with the Permanent Secretaries, Directors and the rest of them. If we did not do that during the initial stages, there would have been a lot of conflicts between the Permanent Secretaries and the Commissioners.
When we came in 2015, we made the Commissioners the Chief Accounting Officers of their ministries. Previously, it used to be the Permanent Secretaries. Now, these Commissioners are coming from outside, so it is important for them to have synergy with the Permanent Secretaries. So, the retreat was organised to fashion out the relationship between the two important organs of the Ministry. We also gave out a booklet outlining that relationship. We feel it is important for the Commissioner to be the Accounting Officer, but whatever he is doing, he must do it with the understanding of the Permanent Secretary. We also tried to emphasize that the Commissioners must go through the Permanent Secretaries when it comes to issues of policy and implementation. In a situation where the Commissioner tries to elbow out the Permanent Secretary and deals with the Directors, you will have problems. So, we tried to insist that whatever the situation, let him or her go along with the Permanent Secretary. We have done that for all political appointees.
For Advisers, it is easier because they don’t have structures under them. We insisted that they must find a way to relate with the Commissioners and Permanent Secretaries. I think we have managed these well. There was also a recent retreat that involved political appointees that work in Government House, where this system was reiterated and reinforced and the goals were revised.
What is the wisdom of making Commissioners Accounting Officers as against Permanent Secretaries? Was it not one of the fallouts of the civil service reform of 1988 that saw the exit of Alhaji Adamu Fika as Head of Service and Secretary to the Military Government during the Babangida administration? Why are you reverting to something that has “failed”?
It didn’t fail. What happened was, I don’t want to use the word sabotage, but it was sabotaged. The civil service structure at that time refused to make it work. At that time, I was at the Administrative Staff College of Nigeria (ASCON) when Babangida attempted to reform the civil service by trying to create a much more result-oriented service. So, when he did that, he came out with that policy and people like Adamu Fika kicked against it because they wanted to eat their cake and have it. The reform at that time created the Directors that we now have. So, they accepted Directors, because it sounds nice to be a Director.
In those days, entry into service was from Assistant Secretary, then Senior Assistant Secretary, Principal Assistant Secretary, Under Secretary, Principal Secretary and then Permanent Secretary. The reform said ‘’don’t do that;’’ it said let’s start with officers. You will have Officer one and two. Then Assistant Director, Deputy Director, before becoming a Director, then you move to Defector General. The old generation civil servants said alright, they wanted to retain the position of Permanent Secretaries, but they also wanted Directors, instead of Assistant Secretary up to Principal Secretary. So, they accepted the Directorate system and at the same time, they want to be Permanent Secretaries instead of Director Generals. It didn’t just make sense. From Director, the next step should be Director General. Isn’t it?
They believed that the word ‘’Permanent’’ made them special and most of them were coming out of the colonial orientation of Permanent Secretaries. So, the reform did not work, because they refused to allow it to work. When Falae was appointed Secretary to the Government, Fika kicked against it because at that time Babangida attempted to separate the office of the Secretary to the Government from the office of Head of Service, so that was a problem. They wanted to eat their cake and have it.
Coming back to your question, I was part of those sorting this out. We gathered all the senior civil servants, put them through the process in ASCON, people like Fika kicked against it. Then they went and appointed a very biased committee to look at that, when Abacha came in. The committee was chaired by Allison Ayida and from the day it was appointed, we knew the answer. So, we started packing shop. That was the problem.
The Commissioner is the Chief Executive, that is what should be the case, but no one did it until Malam Nasir El-Rufai came. He said it very clearly that the Commissioner is the person responsible for the day-to-day administration of the Ministry and for this reason, he must be the Chief Accounting Officer. All along, we had been doing it the wrong way. A Commissioner is the Chief Accounting Officer because we are operating a presidential system of government. If you are doing parliamentary system, where the Ministers are politicians basically, then the Permanent Secretaries would have been the Accounting Officers. Under the presidential system, you are supposed to appoint competent people to head Ministries and Departments, but in the parliamentary, you must appoint politicians because the Ministers must first be elected. You can appoint anyone to be your Commissioner or Minister under that arrangement, but the important lesson is that the presidential systems emphasizes competent people, not those who will rely on the Permanent Secretaries. So, what we are doing is right.
One of the defining attributes of this Government is bringing Permanent secretaries from outside the system, just like Commissioners. What is the wisdom in doing that? For example, why bring in a banker who does not know the system, to be a Permanent Secretary?
For a long time, we have been deceiving ourselves. Go and check the constitution, Permanent Secretaries are political appointees. They are supposed to come and go with the Government that appointed them. We are trying to put the constitution to test in Kaduna State. Permanent Secretaries are not permanent. That is why you find that their career progression ends as Directors. The next level is political appointment which the Governor decides. Even the pension terminates at the level of Director. By the time you get to Permanent Secretary level, you and your Commissioner are the same. And this has been done before.
Alhaji Balarabe Musa, the Governor of Kaduna State during the second republic, appointed Mr Richard Umaru as Permanent Secretary in 1980. The 1979 constitution made Permanent Secretaries political appointees. But for a long time, they kept on living in a fool’s paradise that they are ‘’permanent.’’ And now, we are telling them that they are not. Some of our Permanent Secretaries have served for more than 35 years and are still serving the administration because they are political appointees. In the normal civil service, after 35 years, you are supposed to go; some of them have clocked it and we didn’t ask them to go because they have become political appointees.
What is the relationship between the Institutional Development Council and the Civil Service Commission?
These sub-councils are not supposed to take away the mandate of the Ministries and Agencies. There is a tendency for the councils to start veering in on the activities of Ministries and Agencies and there have been cases like that. The sub-councils are only supposed to coordinate. We have been fighting against that. Gradually, it is part of our job to make sure the councils work according to what they have been set out for. We try to see that they are performing as designated. The Civil Service Commission is one of them, and the Permanent Secretary of the Commission is a member of the Institutional Development Council. Where there are problems, we intervene.
For instance, the relationship between the office of the Head of Service and the Commission. Everywhere you go in the world, there is always friction between these two bodies. Both are almost doing the same thing. The Civil Service Commission is responsible for bringing people into the service, then they hand them over to the Head of Service. This will sometimes bring friction. But when civil servants are getting out of service, the commission has the final authority. They have different roles. We at the Institutional Council are the monitors and coordinators, we don’t try to do their jobs.
For clarity, which institution is responsible for recruitment, discipline and promotion in the civil service?
It is the Civil Service Commission. And that is a constitutional creation. It is one of the few government agencies that are spelt out clearly in the constitution. And that is because they want to protect the integrity of the service. The person recruiting should not be the person managing the workforce. And that is the kind of problem we have in the judiciary.
This check and balance works with the legislature and executive arms of Government. The judiciary drafted the constitution, so they have created some enclaves for themselves that is now overwhelming the entire system. In the executive arm, you have the Civil Service Commission chaired by an independent person. It is spelt out. People with experience are drawn from the service, people who are retired are called back. In the legislative arm, the Assembly Commission Is made up of people who are drawn back from retirement. But in the judiciary, the Chief Judge of the state and the Chief Justice of the Federation are the chairpersons of their own Commissions. It is a conflict of interest.
In Kaduna State for example, they have not taken off because they are entirely shrunk into the office of the Chief Judge. He does and controls everything. This commission is not working. It is the only one that is full of part time members. In the Civil Service Commission and Assembly Commissions, there are full time members from the chairman downwards. In the Judicial Service Commission, only the Chief Judge is full time. So, it is not a structure, it does not operate as one. If you say you want to see the Judicial Service Commission, it is not there. It is simply the office of the Chief Judge. So, unless we address this, we will continue to have problems. But it is one of the things we are trying to address.
One of the key decisions you took at the institutional development council is the transfer of Agency for Mass Literacy from the Ministry of Education to the Ministry of Local Government. It seems like you removed the Agency from its natural habitat to another. Don’t you think that you may have erred in this decision?
When we talk about Mass Literacy, we are looking at a very broad issue. And what we did is, the Local Government Ministry is supposed to be the coordinating unit of the entire mass literacy, because the problem of mass literacy is more at the grassroots than at the state level. We are looking at people that need to know numeracy and literacy, reading and writing and they are closer to the Local Government than the State Government. But after leaving it with the State Government for a long time, we saw that it became like many other Ministries which have with Directors sitting around and doing nothing.
The memo that necessitated that decision shows that Mass Literacy will be devolved back to the Local Government council. The agency has been in the Ministry of Education for a long time and if you ask them what it has been done, you will find out that it had done nothing. With all the Directors and Assistant Directors, they cannot give you what they have accomplished in the last ten years.
It was a very good idea that started in Kano State with the Abubakar Rimi administration in the second republic. They even got a commendation from UNESCO. At that time, they saw it as an agency not under any ministry, but with branches in most of State Government. Even the Federal Government that was opposed to it, adopted it when they saw it was a great idea. The person who even started it in Kano later became the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education. For Mass Literacy to be successful, it has to be independent and not subjected to the bureaucracy of the Ministry. But then, when it was moved and became a department under Ministry of Education, it just disappeared. What we have done is to bring it under the Ministry of Local Government, where most of the people who require the Agency are. The Mass Literacy Agency is for people who are adults and who want to read and write. So, we have brought it to where it rightly belongs.
At the last State Executive Council, a Governance Continuation Plan was adopted. What is this plan all about and how does it affect the Institutional Policy Council?
Yes, at the last Executive Council meeting which we held virtually, we agreed that since we are still going through this pandemic and there is no end in sight , it was decided that governance should not be grounded as a result of the lockdown. We decided that there is need to continue running the government through any means that is possible. And that should be done through virtual meetings and virtual instructions and we should minimise physical meetings. We still have some face-to-face meetings but very minimal, like security meetings. Generally, any meeting above ten people, we usually do it virtually. So, the government will still be operating virtually by Zoom App.
Virtual meeting is novel in our clime. What challenges are you encountering in the course of these Zoom meetings in the last few weeks?
Obviously, there are challenges; the first one being that it is new. Many of us are still trying to grapple with it. The second one is the fluctuations in network service. Some participants of a meeting are some times logged out because there is poor service in the places that they are. Some instructions are very difficult to execute virtually. For example, memos and certain documents can not be signed online based on the tradition that has been existing for so many years. But apart from a few challenges, we have been doing very well. We have been conducting our meetings and operations virtually and online for about five weeks. In fact, I have just finished holding a meeting now before you came in. But in some cases, like I told you, we hold physical meetings but we keep a reasonable distance between participants.
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