Undeserved Aggression Against Bureaucracy, By Eric Teniola

Of all the mistakes made by the military, none is greater than the 1975/1976 assault on bureaucracy in this country. It was called THE GREAT PURGE by the media at the time. But this action destroyed the robust civil service system and since then this country has gone astray. In any national development, there is no alternative to a robust civil service system. The falsification of the bureaucracy is the basis for the total collapse of the government itself. The military indulged in playing civilian service like a sporting event without knowing that it would lead to the decay and decay we are witnessing today.

Bureaucracy means "civil servants, administrative officials who are professionally trained for public service and enjoy permanent tenure, promotion in service - partly by seniority and partly by merit.

Bureaucracy is meticulously professed as apolitical. This essentially insinuates that a bureaucrat should not have his own political agenda but, preferably, faithfully implement the policies of the government in place. It also has another, probably more important meaning, namely: an official's allegiance and adherence must be to the constitution of the country and not to any political party, politician, etc.

Public bureaucracy is a very challenging part of the development process. Bureaucratic capacity decides what will be done, when it will be done and to what extent it will be done. The higher the skillful ability of the bureaucracy to implement labyrinthine plans for economic and social development, the higher the development potential of this society.

Bureaucracy embodies the most consummate and rational way of codifying human activity, and this methodical process and standardized hierarchies are essential to maintaining order, maximizing efficiency, and eliminating patronage.

A bureaucracy is ostensibly impersonal. It mainly means that a bureaucrat is supposed to be guided by objective premeditation while enforcing rules and regulations in the implementation of opalescent policy measures and directives. In other words, a bureaucrat or civil servant or government official, whatever name we choose to call him, is not supposed to be guided by his idiosyncratic whims and fancies, biases and prejudices in performance of his official duties".

This is what Dr. V. Pardha Saradhi tells us bureaucracy means.

Despite the purge of 1975, what good have we achieved since then? Discipline offending officers, but don't collapse the system. In an attempt to discipline some officers, what was done in 1975/76 was to bring down the system itself. We fought a civil war between 1967 and 1969 and we fought that war without borrowing kobo, but the success of that war could be attributed to a robust civil service that existed at the time. Undoubtedly, military officers went to war as infantry, but backup power was provided by bureaucracy. In case we forget, Mr. Nowa Omoigui gave a full report on the efforts of the bureaucracy before and after the civil war. He writes that “during the ten months of the Gowon regime, there was no federal cabinet. The permanent secretaries who dealt directly with Gowon headed the federal ministries.

In the confusion of the weekend of July 29, 1966, the birth of his government at Ikeja barracks was partially mediated by a group of federal permanent secretaries. These included Abdul Aziz Attah, Phillip Asiodu, Allison Ayida, Musa Daggash, Ibrahim Damcida, HA Ejueyitchie, Yusuf Gobir, BN Okagbue and others. Other prominent federal officials included the chairman of the Civil Service Commission, Alhaji Sule Katagum. Along with others, as well as the British and American envoys, these men advised caution in the heat of the unfolding events.

These grand strategic and political machinations of the pre-war period aside, the federal civil service played a complex role during the war, being alternately seen as an ally or an irritant by the military on the front lines. Officials have suggested the establishment of security and civil defense organizations in various states, drawing on logistical resources provided by various ministries. They advised the promulgation of numerous wartime decrees, such as the Public Security Decree (No. 31 of 1967) which prohibited the private possession of arms and ammunition, and the Military Tribunals Decree (Special Powers ) (1968 #4) designed to enforce discipline among Federal troops. A whole series of emergency decrees on trade disputes have been...