Balogun, the Guest Lecturer at the 2013 Public Service Day, said Nigerians should see the country as a potential Tiger currently wrestling with temporary setbacks, “rather than a colonial creation which is destined to crumble soon’’.
He said the country, which is endowed with a huge reservoir of natural resources notably petroleum, tin, iron-ore, bauxite, manganese, fertile and arable land, was destined to be a great nation.
Balogun
“The only time these compatriots come out of privacy and self-marginalisation is when booties, mostly posts, contracts or money are to be shared,’’ he said.
Balogun, however, acknowledged the efforts of the leaders to ensure progress and development of the country, and said that the nation’s diversity should be its strength and not a weakness.
He said the success of the leaders depended on all Nigerians and urged the leaders not to politicise issues, while calling on Nigerians to resist the temptation of setting one ethno-sectarian group against another, in the attempt to acquire or retain power.
Balogun blamed international organisations such as IMF and World Bank for the bad economic policies of the government, saying that the organisations usurp the policy making power of the country.
He condemned the service delivery gap that exists in the country and called on the government to empower the citizens as well as provide them with quality services.
Balogun asked the government to give voice to the people by enhancing the identity value of the Nigerian citizenry.
He listed promotion of civic responsibility, popular participation in governance, access to information, strengthening of accountability and transparency as the measures that would give voice to the people.
In his speech, Gov. Mukhtar Yero of Kaduna, who was the Special Guest at the occasion, called for the implementation of new ideas and methods to achieve positive results in the Public Service.
Yero said this at a lecture to commemorate the 2013 Nigeria Public Service Day with the theme, “Nigerian Public Service in the age of an open government: giving voice to the people’’.
To enhance service delivery, he said the public service should be organised along functional lines designed to bring public arrangements closer to the people with a view to providing them with appropriate and accessible services.
Yero also called for improved capacity training for civil servants, to keep them at par with their counterpart in other parts of the world.
He urged civil servants to be diligent in carrying out their duties because `they are the engine room’ of the nation’s development and without them the country could not move forward.
Yero also said that community and private sector participation in the formulation, implementation of policies and projects would enhance public service delivery.
He said the participation of the people could only be achieved with the government implementing pragmatic reforms that would help in addressing contemporary challenges.
“For instance, the Nigerian Civil Service is yet to develop a system for ensuring proper feedback from stakeholders about its service delivery and the various reforms that had been going on in the service.
Earlier, Alhaji Bukar Aji, the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, had said that the civil service week, was a yearly event aimed at taking stock of the performance of the civil service.
“It is a platform for the service to showcase best practices and innovations, recognise and reward good initiatives in the civil service and to promote values such as professionalism, accountability and integrity.
“These have been the same issues that have confronted the civil service in Nigeria since the advent of democracy in 1999.’’
Aji said that the civil service would continually enhance its capacity in order to maintain the lead in the promotion of good governance and sustainable development. (NAN
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