The Nigerian Public Service and the Challenge of Sustainable Development
Abstract
The Nigerian Public Service as a service delivery institution is a catalyst for national development and occupies a pivotal position in the onerous task of implementing government’s programmes and activities. The public service in Africa in general and Nigeria in particular, lacks the ability to formulate, implement and monitor policies, programmes and strategies focused on economic growth and sustainable development. Lack of motivation, coupled with low salaries/incentives and poor working conditions combine to demoralize the Nigerian public service institution and make it incapable to engage competent workforce to perform their duties professionally. Its inclination to the orthodox public administration practice, as against the new public management focusing on administrative requirements of plans and projects, continues to compound its problems; a feature which has incapacitated and rendered it dysfunctional and unable to initiate innovations to propel sustainable development. This paper adopted a combination of exploratory, descriptive and contextual methodology and generated data from books, journal articles, magazines, newspapers and the internet. Countries such as Tanzania Australia and Malaysia cited in this paper as models, have adopted the practice of the new public management to accomplish the goals of sustainable development. It is the advocacy of this paper that the Nigerian public service should evolve a capacity to contribute to the realization of proactive programmes, through a careful analysis of issues identification of constraints on programmes and projects options.
Authors
- Akpanim N. Ekpe
Department of Public Administration
Akwa Ibom State University
Obio Akpa Campus