1.Given its function of developing and implementing long term development vision, the public service is the main instrument, which enables governments to direct the development process of societies and nations. Being the policy hub for delivering public goods, its capacity to catalyze national development provides the legitimacy with which it can execute its functions. These functions include raising revenue; ensuring managerial, political and financial accountability; developing a conducive environment for the private sector to produce efficiently; achieve human development; and monitor and evaluate performances of public, private and non-governmental organizations that are rendering services on behalf of the government.
However, for the public service, the task of developing a developmental vision is, in reality a derived function, and is dependent on the projections of political leaders – that is to say, what the political leaders aim to achieve. Naturally, in the context of democratic governance founded on political parties and electoral contest, every political leader would have estimations of what they hope to achieve; usually presented as vision statements and documents, such as party manifestos, campaign declarations, statements and speeches, which in a democratic setting, are broad representations of the vision of elected political leaders.
Following electoral victory, the public service, under the managerial leadership of the elected political leadership, is saddled with the mandate to process vision statements, party manifestos, campaign speeches and statements, and translate them into policies that will become development programs and actionable projects. In this context, the articulation of the first national Development plan in 1962 is indicative of the effectiveness of Nigeria’s political leadership of the first republic to direct the nation’s young public service towards national development. Indeed, the relative success of the five-year development plan, in terms of the success of the public service to mobilise the needed personnel, and financial resources, and to execute most of the foundation infrastructural projects at that formative stage of the country’s nationhood is a testament to the vast resourcefulness and development potentials of the country. It is therefore not surprising that the military-political leaders who terminated the first republic and democratic governance, relied and rode on the back of the resourcefulness of the public service to implement a total four national development plans between 1962 and 1985. As was the case in the first republic, all of these plans were build upon well synched symmetrical connections between the military-political leaders and the public service.
The key point is the functionality of the public service as an instrument of revenue mobilization and to translate political visions into actionable developmental projects. When this function ceases, than the public service becomes reduced; to an item of expenditure in our national budget, rather than its proven role as an instrument of resource mobilization.
This is the context in which the present political leaders must carefully evaluate, and properly situate the present minimum wage imbroglio. The fact is that even if the government privatizes every of its institutions and services, so long as the public is not rejiged, retooled and reinvigorated to serve as an effective tool to mobilize the resources needed to execute and deliver government projects and services, the problem of finding the balance between the cost and size of the public services will remain pronounced. Consequently, negotiating and agreeing a commensurable public service wage structure will continue to be an arduous, protracted process; at painful cost to the national economy.
(This discourse consist of excerpts from the book “power of Possibility” by Salihu M. Lukman, page 116, and edited by rnn.org.ng)