By Luminous Jannamike

ABUJA – Stakeholders in the private sector and the government, on Wednesday, identified the crucial role private sector professionals can play in getting big things done in the public sector.

According to them, non-public sector professionals are capable of providing technical knowledge and upscaling the effectiveness of the government workforce.

This was the crux of discussion at a conference organised by Nextier Advisory, a public policy think tank, in collaboration OSIWA, with the theme ‘Getting Big Things Done: Improving the Effectiveness of Cross-Over Professionals in Government’ in Abuja.

The firm, which is a technical partner to the Senate on youth unemployment, noted that Nigeria was facing existential challenges that demand superior competencies from her public service.

Delivering the keynote address, a former corps marshal of the Federal Road Safety Corps, Osita Chidoka, said that Nigeria has continued to lower the standards of recruitment and promotion process in the public service.

He said quota system does not mean lowering standards.

Chidoka, who served as a minister of aviation in Nigeria said the recruitment and promotion of public servants in the public sector should be merit-based.

“We have consistently lowered the standards of people we bring into the public sector. Quota system doesn’t mean lowering the standards below the minimum and lowering the standards is what has destroyed the system,” he said.

The Executive Vice Chairman of Ibadan School of Government and Public Policy, Professor Tunji Olaopa, said there was a huge capacity deficit in the public sector. Consequently, the workforce structure in government MDAs was such that there were too many people doing too little in the system.

“The resultant effect on national development is that 25 percent of public sector programmes and projects are completed and 46 percent of the completed projects are not satisfactory,” he said.

However, the Secretary to Adamawa State Government, Engr. Umar Bindiri, said for cross over professionals to succeed in the public sector, they should be clear about what they want to achieve, cultivate tact and respect for the civil servants in the system, avoid needless complains and learn the complexities of procurement.

Speaking also, former Director-General of Bureau of Public Service Reforms, Dr. Joe Abah, said understanding principals, protocols, and institutional character were necessary for private sector professional to succeed in the public sector.

According to him, some of the reasons for the frustration and failure of some private sector professional who get appointments into government include ignorance of public service rules and code of conduct as well as the ideological terrain and the psychology of civil service.

He said, “If you ‘import’ people who do not have the knowledge of public service rules and code of conduct into government, you might actually end up creating more problems than you thought. It’s an important arrangement to infuse fresh ideas, but there is a way that things are done in the civil service and you need to respect it. Otherwise, you end up being frustrated and burnt in the end.”

But a former Minister of Finance and National Planning, Dr. Shamsudeen Usman noted that protecting professionals, who are crossing over from the private to the public sector, from the distractions of the political system would help them concentrate on achieving results.

He added that besides strong political protection of the President or Governor, preparedness on the part of the government which seeks to infuse private sector expertise in policy making was also required for them to get desired results.

Usman said, “The cross-over professional needs to be protected from the political system. If you’re a CEO of a government agency coming from the private sector, you can get a lot of things done in government because you are protected at that level.

“But part of the problem at the ministerial level is the fact that most governments come unprepared. It usually takes them about four or five years for them to realise the need for reforms.”

On her part, the Chief Executive Officer, PLEG centre, Mrs Bunmi Dipo-Salami, stated that cross-over professionals needed some measure of job security and support system to be effective in the public sector.