Minister Adamu, please watch your back

There are two puzzles I find difficult to unravel about governance and public service in Nigeria. One is how everyone seems to have all the solutions to the myriads of problems that plague us as a country when they are outside government. The second is about those who suddenly have all the answers to all the problems they could not solve while in government the moment they are out of public office.

Nobody embodies the number one puzzle more than our minister of education, Mallam Adamu Adamu. Before his current position in public office, Mallam Adamu was one of Nigeria’s most gifted and very profound activist-public-intellectuals. His weekly column in Daily Trust Newspaper threw light on the dark recesses of our national life. Through his past opinion articles, Mallam Adamu, an ideological purist of the purest form, espoused ideas and ideals rich enough to propel governance and service delivery to the Nigerian people.

His famous opinion piece published by Daily Trust on 15th November 2013 on the parlous state of our university system with its perennial Academic Staff Union strikes will forever remain the locus classicus on how not to run public education in Nigeria.

As a regular reader of his column, I used to offer silent prayers to God that people like this man should be given the opportunity to run our government at all levels; men and women of ideas who are knowledgeable and clear-headed about what should be done to get our country out of the socio-economic quagmire and endemic moral decadence.

Now fast forward seven years later. I cannot believe for the life of me that after six years on the saddle, Mallam  Adamu is superintending over a federal ministry of education where most of the civil servants working there do not understand what serving the people really mean. The ministry is so dysfunctional and its key public-facing directorates poorly administered without any sense of basic customer service etiquette. One then begins to wonder what the whole essence of Service Compact (SERVICOM) is all about if Nigerians, who should be served by civil servants, are daily subjected to horrendous indignity by those who are paid to serve them.

As part of the reforms in the civil service during the Obasanjo administration, the federal government conceived SERVICOM, an initiative designed to promote effective service delivery across ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), but it is obvious that many staff of the ministry of education require a new orientation on how to conduct the business of government. The stories coming out of the ministry of education and the shabby treatment given to many Nigerians who want to study abroad and need credential verification are heart-wrenching.

Not many Nigerians know that the government of Nigeria does not recognise degrees from some universities abroad, including some universities in the United Kingdom, America, North America and Europe. For quality control and standardisation, many universities abroad do not meet our National Universities Commission’s accreditation criteria. To safeguard Nigerians from attending unrecognised institutions abroad, the government through the ministry of education has a list of institutions outside Nigeria that are recognised for postgraduate and undergraduate programmes. The ministry’s department of education support services also authenticates the certificates/results and other credentials of Nigerians seeking to study abroad to be sure they are genuine ones at the request of the foreign institutions. Sadly, what Nigerians who need this service are made to suffer at the ministry, just because civil servants want to extort money from applicants by creating needless administrative bottlenecks, is unimaginable.

There are reports that many people who travelled down to Abuja for credential verification and didn’t have money for hotel accommodation had to sleep on the floor in the ministry for days waiting to be attended to. Citizens had to cringe, genuflect, bribe and endure being dehumanised. Can Mallam Adamu honestly feign ignorance of the stench oozing out of his ministry?

It is needless restating that most of the disdain, frustration and distrust Nigerians have towards the government, which fuel citizens’ antagonism, is a result of the serial unpalatable experiences they had while seeking to use government services. It is as if Nigerians cannot get anything done with their government without roadblocks being mounted against them by some unscrupulous civil servants.

It is said that dogs don’t eat dogs, but that popular saying does not apply to the federal ministry of education. The spirit of pride and mutual loyalty that, ideally, should exist among civil servants is lacking with the staff of the department of education support services. On the 18th of August 2021, the head of the civil service of the federation, Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan, issued a circular to all permanent secretaries on additional requirements for officers seeking approval for study leave abroad. According to the circular, many officers seeking approval for study leave have submitted admission letters from various foreign institutions which are suspected to be illegal and sub-standard, while some of the institutions abroad run sub-standard degree and postgraduate programmes.

To guide against this, officers seeking to study abroad must get a letter from the federal ministry of education confirming that the institution from which they obtained admission is recognised by the Nigerian government and that the programmes are not sub-standard. Any officer seeking study leave must attach a clearance letter on the status of the school abroad from the ministry of education with their study leave application before the head of service can approve such request. But in a curious turn of events recently, a director cadre civil servant from another ministry was psychologically brutalised and made to endure emotional torture before she could get a clearance letter. This is a fellow civil servant who is going to one of the best universities in the UK on a fully-funded international scholarship. Not even the fact that she mentioned her status in the civil service could buy her decent treatment from her fellow civil servants. She was able to get the clearance letter only when a call was made from a higher authority to the permanent secretary of the ministry, who graciously stepped in to get the clearance letter out. This is for someone who could make recourse to a higher authority. What becomes the fate of other Nigerians who do not have anyone high up that can intervene on their behalf?

With the pedigree of the minister of education and the huge profile of accountability he brought into public office, it should never be heard that he is leading a Ministry where his staffers are louts who treat Nigerians with utter disdain. The minister’s tenure in office will not be judged only on the number of times ASUU went on strike, but also on how well the staff at the federal ministry of education treat Nigerians.

It is bad enough that after six years in office as the minister of education, no Nigerian university is among the top 20 universities in Africa on the 2021 Global University Ranking. This is a global ranking where the University of Cape Town, University of Pretoria, University of Witwatersrand, the University of Stellenbosch and University of KwaZulu-Natal, all from South Africa, occupy the top 5 spots. It will amount to double jeopardy if Mallam Adamu is leading a ministry where citizens cannot access basic service without knowing a powerful politician or have Aso Rock connection that can call either the minister himself or his permanent secretary.