The
civil service in a developing country like Nigeria occupies the core position
in the business of planning and development of society, hence, Lewis (1966) refers to it as a crucial part of the
infrastructure, since the quality of all other public services depend upon the
quality of the civil service. He opines that development planning is hardly
practicable except a country establishes a civil service capable of its
formulation and implementation.
The
quality of the civil service depends on the human resources and its careful
recruitment. A careful recruitment must hinge on a merit system. Unfortunately,
this has not been the case in Nigeria. This must have been in the minds of the
Udoji Commission (1974), who did not hesitate to point out that part of the
problems of the Nigerian Civil Service is due to its style of recruitment. The
commission was quick to observe that in Nigerian Civil Service vacancies were
not normally advertised, recruiting bodies relied more on unsolicited
applications, interviews were “education qualification-oriented” and its
duration is usually short and, as a result, no determined attempt was made to
discover traits, interests and abilities. Till date, nothing has changed.
Eleanya
(1990) agrees with the observation of the Udoji commission in his (Eleanya’s ) view
that, a policy on recruitment should be on the recruitment of the best possible
personnel for all job positions, the reason being that management has found
people to be the decision variable between the success or failure of an
organization.
Continuing,
Eleanya blames the issue of not using merit in the recruitment process on
Federal Character when he posits that, the assessment of intellectual merit or
genius on the basis of geographical spread or Federal Character is not absurd
but reveals a mind that is diseased and fermenting with sectional bigotry. At
best such ideas are infantile, retrogressive and ludicrous in the extreme. The
weighing of area of origin above merit and competence cannot be divorced from
Nigeria’s present economic and political calamities.
This
assertion also agrees with Achebe’s (1983), position on the effects of ethnic
base or “wrong and right” tribe in the recruitment process in the Nigerian
Civil Service when he observes that, the greatest sufferer is the nation itself
which has to contain the legitimate grievance of a wronged citizen, accommodate
the incompetence of a favoured citizen, and more important and of greater
scope, endure a general decline of moraic and subversion of efficiency caused
by an erratic and corrupt system of performance and reward (recruitment).
Emerging
from the above is the fact that, geographical spread or quota system breeds
favouritism as “political stakeholders” are asked to nominate candidates of
their choices for civil service positions. The effect is that personnel vetting
of would be personnel and the existing staff are sacrificed. It is self-evident
that when personnel are assigned responsible positions to areas they are not competent;
there will be absence or weaknesses in the internal control thus creating
opportunity for fraud, waste and unintentional errors to occur.
CLICK ON
THE LINK BELOW TO APPLY FOR THE NBS JOB RECRUITMENT