Written by Adamu Adamu adamuadamu@dailytrust.com Friday, 01 June 2012 05:00


At the You Win Programme held recently in Abuja, President Goodluck Jonathan praised merit and vowed henceforth to make all public appointments only in accord with it, and he declared the era of godfathers dead. “You don’t need to know Mr President to get the job, as long as you are competent,” he said.

But the nation had heard all that before, and in this case, it was not just waiting for when practice would belie theory, because it already had; it was wondering just what merit the president was talking about. Needless to say, true merit had already been sacrificed at the altar of the so-called Oronsaye reforms, which the Jonathan administration, for want of proper knowledge of service ethic, had been hailing and implementing.

However, since that pronouncement, none of the major appointments by the Jonathan administration had adhered to proper procedure and the issue of merit had become completely out of reckoning. With that so-called reform, the administration perfected a method that was dismissive of merit, hostile to experience, and in a hurry to get rid of those who possessed it and who had, on account of it, reached the top. As feared then and expressed by some at the beginning, and now, with the benefit of hindsight, it has become all too clear that the entirety of the Oronsaye reform was aimed at getting rid of persons of Northern origin or, ominously for those who kept quiet, those of them who have no godfathers.

By the time Oronsaye was through with his reform, nine permanent secretaries and 110 directors were shown their way out of the service. Of the nine directors sacked, all nine were of Northern origin; and of the 110 directors sacked, 90 of them were of Northern origin. To pretend that it was all done for any reason other than getting rid of them would in fact be adding salt and insult to injury. It is all too convenient and couldn’t have been an accident; and even if it were, higher considerations and the constitutional demands for the reflection of Federal character should have called for greater circumspection by temporary power holders. That this hadn’t been done might well have been responsible for today’s impunity in making appointments by political executives at all levels.

As it were, the Oronsaye reform had it all worked out and all future imitators had to do was to work back form solution to a contrived problem. Now, after finishing with the main service, the reform is being extended to parastatals, corporations and banks in which the Federal government has an interest, by way of reorganisations, restructurings, rationalisations and, despite his recent praise of merit, by the president, through acts of omission, most glaringly as in the case of his refusal to reappoint Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme, NHIS.

By the end of February this year, Dr M. Waziri Dogo-Muhammad, then Executive Secretary of National Health Insurance Scheme had just finished a very successful first tenure and everyone was expecting his confirmation for the second when he was removed. Up to the time of writing, no reason had been given for his removal; but whatever it was it couldn’t have been for want of merit.

Dr Dogo-Muhammad’s appointment was made following an internationally advertised and keenly contested interview. The selection process was handled by Grid Consultants, an internationally-tested private management consulting firm that drew up the criteria for short-listing, did the shortlist, and conducted the interview of the 108 candidates who applied. When the consultant submitted its report to then minister of health, Professor Eyitayo Lambo, Dogo-Muhammad was first by a mile, having scored an unprecedented 100 per cent! The minister made a very strong recommendation to President Olusegun Obasanjo, and Dr Dogo-Muhammad was appointed for a period of 5 years in the first instance with effect from March1, 2007.

A highly qualified British-trained surgeon and a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Dr Dogo-Muhammad had had an eventful tenure at the NHIS which as full of awards. The International Social Security Association gave Dogo-Muhammad’s NHIS/MDG Maternal and Child Health Project a Merit Award at an international get-together in Arusha Tanzania on December 6, 2011, and declared it as the best example of best practice worthy of emulation by other African countries. This award has been posted by President Jonathan on his Facebook as one of the achievements of his administration.

After launching Dr Dogo-Muhammad’s Community-Based Social Health Insurance Programme in Isanlu, Kogi State, on December 17, 2011, President Jonathan was so impressed that he posted it on his ‘Neighbour 2 Neighbour’ social forum; and it is today recognised as one of the four notable achievements of the Federal Ministry of Health.

At the end of Dr Dogo-Muhammad’s first tenure, the Minister of Health, Professor C. Onyebuchi Chukwu, assessed his stewardship as Executive Secretary of the NHIS, scored his performance as excellent and recommended the renewal of his second and final tenure of 5 years to President Goodluck Jonathan, in line with the provision of the NHIS Act. But here the president’s commitment to merit seemed to have suddenly vanished into thin air, and he directed that the vacancy be advertised.

Yet, on the very day the president declined to approve Dr Dogo-Muhammad’s reappointment, he approved the reappointment of the Chief Medical Director of Gwagwalada Specialist Hospital, and subsequently went on to approve the reappointments to second tenure of the director general of the Administrative Staff College of Nigeria, ASCON, and the executive secretary of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, without asking that these vacancies be advertised.

If there are no godfathers, there should be no room for impunity and the adoption of different standards for different people. There must be uniformity in official conduct, because the procedure for the exercise of power in a democratic setting is, and should always be, clearly spelt out and transparently applied. At any event, powers for making appointments ought usually to contain the procedure to be followed in implementing them; but where the procedure is not already in the law, this should always be worked out before it is applied. The leadership of the nation should by no means equal ownership of the nation or its resources or the power to distribute these with impunity to some and to the exclusion of others.

There must be a standard, and the public must always be in a position to hold leaders to an acceptable level of official conduct. Ultimately, this is going to prove better even for the government. While it is generally agreed that Nigeria’s main problem is the issue of leadership, it is not often realised how much the rot and decline in the public service has contributed to, or failed to solve, the extent of the mess. It has not been fully appreciated that with an efficient, apolitical, merit-based public service in place, almost all the ill-effects of the inexperience, the incompetence and even the absolute cluelessness of the political leadership will have largely been mitigated. It is therefore in the interest, not just of the people but, of the government itself that appointments be made according to procedure; because the capacity and efficiency of the service—and ultimately the effectiveness of government—depend on getting that right.

For our purposes, the most important issues with regard to making appointments are this restoration of proper procedure of doing things, the enforcement of merit, and the need to reflect Federal character; and these last two are by no means mutually exclusive. And all the three could only be ignored at the government’s ultimate peril.

The nation knew that Dr Dogo-Muhammad emerged through a transparent merit-based due process without the help of a godfather, and he laboured to grow NHIS into an enviable government parastatal at par with its counterparts around the continent and the world; and it will be most unfortunate if this now becomes a disadvantage for him. But it will perhaps be even more unfortunate and sad for the president after what he has told the world about his intention and resolve to put an end to the rule of the godfather and recognize merit in making public appointments. He is clearly failing himself and the nation.

If, as seems the case, the president has been misadvised, or has merely committed an honest mistake, or no godfather pleaded on his behalf, we entreat and urge him to disregard the advice, reverse himself, and be the godfather of all, and do what is right and proper by reappointing Dr Waziri Dogo-Muhammad, who has displayed both merit in the competitive interview and excellence at work, to his richly-deserved second tenure in office as the executive secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).www.dailytrust.com