Fresh hurdles for Bayelsa civil servants

MIKE ODIEGWU writes that the Riot Act recently read to Bayelsa civil servants by Governor Seriake Dickson could be a right step towards cleansing the rot in the state civil service Discerning observers in Bayelsa State believe that some civil servants are the

authors and executors of most political crises which have retarded the growth and development of the state.

They observe that behind most bloody political disturbances are the fingers and voices of a few civil servants, especially the senior public officials.

Pundits watch with dismay how some civil servants puncture their sacred veil of anonymity and disregard their guiding doctrine of neutrality to dictate the political pace in President Goodluck Jonathan’s state. They provide a red carpet for every new administration but plot the downfall of the government if they perceive that its policies and actions are against their interests.

Booting out any unfavourable administration appears easy for them. In a conspiratorial manner, they create disaffection between the workers and the government by spreading malicious gossips against the administration. The workers will then pass a vote of no confidence in the government while the cabal, through their network in the political party, repositions an approved candidate for the top job.

There is a general belief that members of a political cabal of senior civil servants, who are themselves influential actors in the Peoples Democratic Party, decide who gets what, when and how. Besides, they have accumulated wealth by padding the payrolls and built estates and mansions by cooking the books. Little wonder some senior civil servants are said to own some of the expensive hotels in Yenagoa, the state capital.

Apart from sponsoring candidates for elections, some civil servants are alleged to have contested electoral positions without following the due process of first resigning from the service. Pundits believe that the misplaced priorities, rot and abuse of professional ethics in the civil service were the reasons behind the maiden meeting between the Governor of the state, Mr. Seriake Dickson, and the civil servants.

The governor, at the meeting which was held in the Cultural Centre, Yenagoa, and attended by many civil servants, highlighted the ills in the civil service and decreed that it was time the workers embraced the professionalism associated with their jobs.

Dickson minced no words as he reeled out the shortcomings of the civil service in the state. He, however, said the performance of the civil service was critical to the restoration of the state. “You are the engine room. It is you and you alone who will determine the success or failure of the government,” he told the civil servants.

Dickson particularly frowned on the involvement of civil servants in partisan politics. He said those interested in politics, including the forthcoming local government elections in the state, should first resign from the service. 

He said, “This government will not condone any act of indiscipline. Anybody who wants to participate in politics should resign his or her appointment and join us on this side of the divide. Some of you, I leant, have purchased nomination forms for the next local government election without resigning your appointments. I hope such people win because if they don’t win, there will be no room for them in the civil service.

“When you are tired as a civil servant, you resign or retire and come and join us in the ‘roforofo’ work. But as long as every day and every month, you go and collect salary and claim arrears. You are a civil servant and you must give us the work of a civil servant.

“My own duty is to create an enabling environment for you to do your best as civil servants and that is why we have taken some deliberate decisions to depoliticise the civil service.”

He said a committee had been established to conduct secret investigations into the activities of civil servants in the state with a view to identifying those involved in partisan politics.

At the end of the enquiries, he said all indicted civil servants would be shown their way out of the service, insisting that the rules regulating the civil service must be obeyed.

“Very soon, some civil servants will be made to leave the service. Also, some of you, aside from being civil servants, are party leaders and contractors in your areas. Civil servants are known to be disciplined and this has assisted in the past in the building of egalitarian society,” he said.

The governor then turned his attention to the pull-down syndrome in the civil service. He lamented that civil servants had constituted themselves into an opposition to the government. He said they were fond of tearing down the government with malicious gossips and rumours.

 “We can no longer continue to tolerate careless statements. We cannot be opposition to the government. You are meant to be seen and not heard,” he ruled.

Dickson was further irked by the increasing fraudulent activities among the civil servants, which he said accounted for the rating of the state’s workers as the richest in the country. He appealed to the workers to help the government in reducing its wage bill. He said his administration had been able to cut down the bill from N6bn to N3.7bn.

He stated that the government was gathering the reports of ongoing fraud in the service, adding that the situation indicted that those culpable among the workers would be severely dealt with.

“We want to get more, so that not only are we going to take them out of the system, the prison will be ready very soon. Those who go on committing payroll fraud, their cup shall be filled soon,” he said.

Dickson unsettled the workers when he announced the plan by the government to implement the existing tax law in the state’s civil service.  “The civil servants make the government not to perform by not paying their taxes. Most people are under-taxed and the state is not following the tax law,” he said.

But one of the workers, who identified himself as Mr. Asueni Okolobi, told the governor that it was not the right time to introduce taxation in the state. He said the tax law could be implemented in the state after some basic facilities, including functional health care system, had been put in place.

“Are you going to add to our suffering or are you going to reduce our load?” he queried Dickson, who was surprised at the conduct of Okolobi. Dickson, however, rebuffed the claims of Okolobi and asked him to tell the state the right time to enforce a tax regime.

To demonstrate his seriousness over the civil service reform, Dickson announced the immediate suspension of some civil servants he said were indicted for wrong doing. He said a civil servant in charge of the Banquet Hall, Government House, Yenagoa, Mrs. Akpoebi Ifidi, was suspended for spreading “false rumour” about his administration.

He pronounced the suspension of John Apah, Ransom Temeya and Couple Ingibina for other offences, including abuse of office. He stated that Apah, who was the former secretary to the state Environmental Sanitation Authority, abused his office by engaging in employment racketing.

Apah was said to have offered graduate level jobs to his kinsmen and cronies without following the rules regulating recruitment in the civil service. He said Ingibina was indicted for indiscriminate allocations of land in Yenagoa without recourse to the city’s master plan.

According to him, Ingibina, who, until his suspension, was a surveyor in the Capital City Development Authority, contributed to the structural defects of the state capital. He said the state would revoke and take over the illegally allocated portions of land, adding that houses were not meant to be built around some public facilities and resorts.

The governor berated Temeya for committing an offence he described as “making careless statements about the government.” Noticing that the civil servants were jittery over some of his pronouncements, Dickson said, “One thing, I want to leave behind, if you will all support, I will like you all to become better civil servants so that whoever comes after me will meet a better civil service than I have met. That, I think is basically the thrust of this interaction.

But after studying the maiden interaction of the governor with the civil servants, pundits are of the opinion that the governor will be on the verge of correcting the anomaly and instability in the state’s polity if he is able to match his words with actions.