Featured Metro

Highly capable, professional bureaucracy essential for successful development–Osinbajo

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo says a highly capable and professional bureaucracy is essential for successful development.

The vice president communicated this in a lecture he delivered on Thursday at the Leadership Enhancement and Development Programme (LEAD-P) organised by the Office of the Head of Service of the Federation in Abuja.

The vice president spoke on the topic “Strategic Leadership – The Essential Skills.”

Osinbajo urged Nigerian civil servants to facilitate the operations of the private sector and non-governmental organisations by providing enabling environment for them.

He said that the capacity, professionalism and integrity of a country’s civil service were vital for its general development.

“The role of government agencies as licensors, regulators, and revenue generators only makes sense when operators understand that the bigger picture is to provide the most auspicious environment for the private and non-government sectors to operate.

“Everything that happens in the public service has an impact on the lives, livelihoods and the future of our country.

“Great economies and great nations, prosperity and abundance of nations and communities are created by men and not spirits,” explaining that it is people who make nations great.”

According to him, the strategic thinker must know that he is called to tend not to strangle the goose that will lay the golden eggs.

He said the same approach applied to every component of government policy, not just the economy.

Osinbajo said that countries such as Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Brazil, China and India had well developed and professional bureaucracies.

“A highly capable and professional bureaucracy is essential for successful development.

“Given the roles and responsibilities of the civil service namely; to design and implement policy, regulate economic activity, and provide public goods including infrastructure and social services.

“Very often we hear people say that Nigeria’s problem is not plans and policies, but rather that of a lack of implementation.

“The subtext of such comments is simple: the bureaucracy is the key; if it works, everything works; if it fails, plans and policies are hardly worth the paper they are written on; the bureaucracy literarily holds the future of the nation in its hands.”

Osinbajo said that the Federal Government’s Social Investment Programme, as well as its commitment to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty, were massive policy initiatives that required a full understanding and strategic interpretation by the civil service for effective implementation.

He said that the strategic leader must recognise the whole point of the civil service and government agencies, which must be to facilitate and enable individuals, corporations and other commercial groups sometimes working with the government to invest.

Osinbajo listed key attributes that enhanced strategic leadership, such as strategic thinking, articulation, systemic structure and organization, collaboration, planning and implementation, among others.

According to him, good pay is not enough, as accountability and discipline are as important.

The vice president commended the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation and her team for establishing the first LEAD-Programme, as well as the improved Federal Civil Service Strategy and Implementation Plan (FCSSIP) 2021-2025.

In his goodwill message, Mr Boss Mustapha, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, said that civil service should be the most motivated, most skilled and most informed organ of government to be able to implement government policies.

“Whatever policies you evolve, if they end up being poorly implemented that is the end of the story.

“Your policies are as good as dead on arrival if you do not have men and women who are properly trained, properly resources, properly skilled and equipped to be able to implement these policies,” Mustapha stated.

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, in his goodwill message, recalled the role Nigeria’s civil service played at the most critical periods in the country’s history.

He said it was the civil service that rescued Nigeria during such trying periods in history as the civil war and during the military regimes.

On her part, Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Folasade Yemi-Esan said the programme was designed to equip the workforce with requisite knowledge and competencies to formulate and implement government policies.

“It is in this vein that the LEAD-P has been structured to identify, train, cultivate and retain the next generation of leaders in the civil service to effectively respond to the evidenced skill gaps in the service and champion the implementation of policies and programmes,” she said.

No fewer than 121 civil servants participated in the first batch of the LEAD-P training.

Related posts

2,663 inmates in Lagos Correction centres in 2020 are awaiting trial –DPP

Meletus EZE

Airlines record slow traffic, delays over protests

Our Reporter

BOI secures additional €1 billion for onlending to MSMEs, large enterprises

Our Reporter

ICRC facilitates release of 23 people held by rebel group in South Sudan

Meletus EZE 

Court grants DAAR Communication, NBC leave to settle out of court

By Aliyu DANLADI

Marketers link petrol price hike to naira devaluation, others

Editor