“The phrase, public office is a public trust, has of late become common property“, Charles Sumner
The Code of Conduct Bureau
rightly admonishes Nigerians that “Public office is a trust, don’t abuse it!” In the same spirit, Article XI, Section 1 of the 1987 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines, under the heading “Accountability of Public Officers,” declares that “public office is a public trust,” and that public officers and employees must, at all times, be accountable to the people, serve them with responsibility, integrity, loyalty and efficiency, act with patriotism and justice, and lead modest lives. These laudable injunctions from two countries located in different parts of the world are not merely national precepts. They are universal aspirations. They speak to the same ancient and enduring idea that public authority is not personal possession, but delegated trust. They remind us that the state does not belong to those who temporarily occupy its offices, but to the people in whose name those offices exist. These are also the traits, habits and tendencies that I encountered throughout my years in the Nigerian Foreign Service as I travelled to different countries and observed how their governments worked.
Applying these principles to corruption has become necessary under the prevailing conditions in our country. Corruption is not limited to the misappropriation of public funds. It also includes the abuse of trust that comes with holding public office. There is a pervasive and troubling tendency in Nigeria for some public office holders to insinuate their kinsmen, relations, friends and loyalists into the public offices they occupy once they are appointed. This has become a disturbing culture and a visible trend. A visit to the office of a minister, permanent secretary, director-general, executive secretary, head of a commission, chief executive of a public agency or even a political party secretariat often gives the visitor the immediate impression that he has entered the person’s local government, village, clan or home state rather than an institution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
The front office, protocol desk, drivers, personal assistants, security personnel, messengers and other ancillary staff are frequently drawn from the same narrow circle of ethnic, regional, familial, religious or political affinity. One is compelled to wonder whether such appointments are made out of a sense of empowerment, entitlement, insecurity, patronage, convenience or mere whim on the part of the office holder. Whatever the motive, the effect is often the same. A public office, established by law and sustained by public resources, is gradually converted into a private estate. In such subtle but insidious ways, government offices are being privatised without legislation, without public debate and without accountability. Where compliance with extant regulations, civil service rules and federal character principles ought to be expected, their breach is often displayed openly before the visitor.
The impropriety is not hidden. It is advertised. It sits at the reception desk, answers the telephone, opens the gate, drives the official car, carries the files and sometimes the rifle, controls access and may even determine who can or cannot see the public officer. This is not merely a matter of personal preference. It is a serious governance problem. Public office is not the personal property of its temporary occupant. It is an institution of the state, held in trust for the people. The President, the minister, permanent secretary, director-general or chief executive is only a steward, not an owner. Yet in Nigeria, the boundary between public trust and private possession has become dangerously blurred.
The moment a person is appointed to office, the assumption seems to arise that he or she has also acquired the right to populate that office with persons of his or her own choosing, regardless of rules, competence, equity or institutional propriety. This habit diminishes the dignity of the state. It weakens institutions, erodes professionalism, breeds suspicion and deepens the very divisions that public service ought to overcome. When an office of government begins to look like the extension of a village meeting, a family compound, an ethnic association or a political campaign structure, the idea of neutrality in public administration is compromised.
Citizens who approach such offices no longer feel that they are dealing with the Nigerian state. They feel instead that they are entering the private domain of a powerful individual and his or her inner circle. The question must therefore be asked plainly: should government offices be privatised? Should a public officer, merely because he or she has been appointed or elected to a position of authority, be allowed to transform that office into a haven for kinsmen, dependants and loyalists? Should the machinery of the state be reduced to an instrument of personal comfort, ethnic consolidation, religious familiarity or patronage distribution? The answer must be an emphatic no!
Public office must remain public in spirit, composition, language, sentiment, conduct and appearance. It must reflect the impartiality, discipline and diversity of the state. It must not become the private enclosure of those who are privileged to occupy it for a season. A country already divided and burdened by distrust, nepotism and weak institutions cannot afford the further privatisation of its government offices by those entrusted with their custody. The danger in this practice is that it appears harmless at first glance. A public officer may argue that he or she merely needs people who can be trusted. Certain duties, it may be said, are sensitive and therefore require persons who are close, loyal, familiar and dependable. This argument, attractive as it may sound, is one of the most convenient and specious excuses for the erosion of institutional standards.
Trust is important in public life, but trust cannot be reduced to bloodline, ethnicity, religion, village origin or political loyalty. The highest form of trust in government should be trust in rules, procedures, institutions and competence. When public officers trust only those who come from their immediate surroundings or backgrounds, they confess indirectly that they do not trust the state they serve. They confess that the civil service system cannot provide dependable personnel. They confess that professionalism, training, discipline and institutional memory are inferior to kinship. They confess, in effect, that the government in which they serve or they lead cannot be trusted to be neutral and inclusive. This is a dangerous confession, because no modern state can be built on such tenuous foundations.
A state cannot function if every official carries his or her village into his or her office and surrounds himself with persons whose principal and only qualification is familiarity. The tragedy is that this practice reproduces itself across the system. The President may do it, the governor may do it, the minister may do it, the permanent secretary may do it, the director-general may do it, the vice-chancellor may do it, and the local government chairman may do it. Eventually, the public begins to accept the practice as normal. What should appear repugnant and provoke outrage becomes routine. What should invite sanction becomes a mark of influence. What should be treated as institutional abuse is celebrated as “empowerment” or “taking care of one’s people.”
But government is not a family support scheme. It is not an ethnic welfare association. It is not a compensation mechanism for friends, political associates and relatives. Public office exists to serve the general public, not the private circle of its occupant. The state collects taxes, allocates resources, makes laws, enforces regulations and administers authority on behalf of all the people. It is therefore morally indefensible for anyone entrusted with public office to treat it as an opportunity to enlarge his personal household or reward his sectional constituency.
This practice also injures merit. It closes doors against competent officers who may not belong to the favoured circle. It demoralises career personnel who have served patiently, acquired experience and waited for responsibility. It sends the message that ability counts for little or nothing when compared with proximity to power. Over time, the bureaucracy becomes less professional and more personal. Files move not because systems work, but because somebody knows somebody. Access is granted not because a citizen has a right to be heard, but because he has been cleared by the inner circle.
In such an environment, public service loses its character and purpose. The office becomes an enclave of sectional affiliation.
The official becomes a patron. The staff become clients. The “other” citizen becomes an outsider.
This is how institutions decay, not always by dramatic collapse, but by small daily violations that accumulate until the state itself becomes deformed and utterly unrecognisable. Nigeria’s federal character principle, whatever its imperfections, was intended to prevent domination, exclusion and sectional appropriation of public institutions. Its spirit is that government should reflect the diversity of the country and reassure citizens that the state belongs to all. Yet the private capture of offices mocks and renders nonsense this principle. An institution may appear national in law, but in practice its immediate environment may be monopolised by one network.
The signboard outside may read “Federal Ministry” or “National Commission,” but the atmosphere inside may suggest otherwise. The appearance of public office matters. Symbols, composition, conduct, language and atmosphere matter greatly. A citizen who walks into a government office should feel the presence of the Republic, not the shadow of a clan. He should encounter order, neutrality, courtesy and professionalism. He should not be made to feel that he is seeking favour from a private household or an ethnic association. Public administration must inspire confidence, and confidence begins with the assurance that the office is governed by rules rather than personal preferences.
Even the language of administration should reflect the neutrality of the state, not the vernacularisation of public authority by those temporarily in charge. This is why we must recover the old understanding of public office as trust. In that understanding, the officer does not own the office. He occupies it temporarily. The furniture is not his, the vehicles are not his, the staff are not his, the files are not his, the budget is not his, and the authority he exercises is not his personal inheritance. Everything belongs to the state and, ultimately, to the people. He is only a custodian for a limited period. To privatise government office is therefore to betray the meaning of public service. It is to confuse occupancy with ownership. It is to mistake appointment for possession. It is to convert national authority into personal advantage and privilege.
No country can build strong institutions on such whimsical habits. No bureaucracy can remain professional where every change of office holder brings a new household of favourites. No citizen can trust a state that appears to be constantly captured in fragments by those appointed to serve it. Nigeria must therefore insist on the depersonalisation of public office. Recruitment, posting, deployment and appointment of support staff must be guided by rules, not sentiments. Public officers must be reminded that their first loyalty is to the Constitution, the laws of the country, the ethics of service and the citizens they are appointed or elected to serve.
They may come from a village, a state, a region, an ethnic or religious group, but once they occupy public office, they must rise above these narrower identities. The government office must remain a public space in the noblest sense of that expression. It must be open, neutral, detribalised, disciplined and representative. It must not be privatised by stealth, captured by familiarity or reduced to an extension of personal power. The health of the Nigerian state depends not only on grand reforms, but also on the restoration of propriety in the everyday and minuscule conduct of public authority. Public office should never become private property. It is a sacred trust. Those who cannot understand this distinction should not be entrusted with the custody of the state.
Steps should be taken at once to correct this lamentable and demeaning practice before it destroys what remains of the integrity of the public service. It is therefore expected that the Code of Conduct Bureau, the Public Complaints Commission, the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, the Civil Service Commission and the Federal Character Commission should all be awake to their responsibilities in this regard. Above all, the National and State Assemblies should do the right thing by exercising effective oversight over this matter. The privatisation of public office by stealth must not be allowed to become the accepted grammar of governance in Nigeria.
