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There are encounters that happen because circumstances bring people together, and there are encounters that seem to gather together the many strands of one’s intellectual and personal journeys. My recent experience of meeting Professors Grace and Ademola Tayo in Nairobi is an example of the latter. Unlike my encounters with other people during my travels in Kenya, which were a part of my tour of the country, this experience was one in which many factors converged – from friendship, memories and religion to education, institutional history, and the general possibilities of <a href="https://absafricatv.com/amref-health-africa-ceo-calls-for-action-on-health-in-africa/” title=”Amref Health Africa CEO calls for action on health in Africa”>African intellectual endeavor. I admire the Tayo family to the point of adoration.
After all, Nairobi was indeed the location where this took place, but there was much more to it than that. Being there, sitting with Grace and Ademola Tayo, I was once again reminded of myself that universities are not only buildings of education and research. They are communities of memory. They are places through which people pass, leaving traces behind and carrying experiences forward. They are also bridges through which Africa may come into contact with itself. Grace contributed the graciousness and warmth that she has always brought to our meetings, while Ademola contributed the quiet generosity of spirit that has marked our scholarly encounters throughout the years. There was the comfort of familiarity, but there was also a freshness to the place where we met. No longer did we meet in the institutional setting of Babcock in Nigeria. We met in Nairobi, Kenya, in a setting that from the very beginning widened our conversation far beyond any personal memory. Suddenly both Nigeria and Kenya were in the room; West and East Africa talked to one another through friendship. The distance between the two nations somehow seemed not so much a geographical fact as an intellectual and human connection.
I could not help but reflect on Professor Tayo’s experience and the transition of institutions that had led him to Nairobi. For several years, he had been identified with Babcock University as Vice-Chancellor from 2015 till the end of 2025. This period had been marked by his experience in the difficult sphere of Nigerian higher education, where one should know how to balance scholarship, administration, development of the institution, religious convictions, expectations of the community, and the increasing requirements to be met by universities in the dynamic society. Add the experience of his staff being kidnapped, and I had to wake him up in the middle of the night!
Tayo’s appointment as the Vice-Chancellor of the Adventist University of Africa in Nairobi, which came into effect on January 1, 2026, and his official inauguration as its fourth Vice-Chancellor in June 2026, thus meant much more than simply a change of institutions. It represented the continuation of an African academic journey across national borders.
That movement interests me because we often tell the story of African intellectual mobility in only one direction. It has been customary to discuss how many scholars in Africa have migrated away from their home continent to universities found in Europe, North America, and other parts of the globe. This is a very vital story, and the story of brain drain in Africa cannot be told without mentioning it. There is, however, another story that should be given much more importance, and that is migration within Africa. The movement from Nigeria to Kenya is part of this quieter but increasingly important story. It reminds us that the African university can become a destination for African expertise, rather than simply a point from which African expertise departs. Professor Tayo introduced me to his amiable management, comprising professors from Botswana, Uganda, and Ethiopia, places that I know intimately.
Tayo’s academic journey makes this movement particularly interesting. He began his academic formation in Nigeria, which includes his education in Agricultural Economics from the University of Ibadan, before going into other areas in postgraduate studies. His academic career was nurtured in teaching and academic planning, in postgraduate education and administration, as well as in his university-level experience. He had experiences outside of Nigeria as well, in the form of his connection to Adventist higher education in other parts of Africa.
His appointment at AUA can therefore be seen not as an isolated episode but as another stage in a career that has progressively connected different parts of the African academic landscape. But the story becomes even more interesting when Grace’s academic journey is considered alongside his. Professor Oluwatoyin Grace Tayo is not simply accompanying a university administrator to a new location. She is herself a scholar and academic leader, with extensive experience in teaching, research, and research management. At the Adventist University of Africa, she serves as Director of Research and Grants Development. Her academic work in Animal Nutrition and her experience in research administration, grant development, mentorship, and research ethics bring another dimension to the Tayos’ presence in Nairobi. Their transition to Kenya therefore represents, in a broader sense, the movement of two experienced Nigerian academics into an institution whose intellectual mission extends across the African continent.
This was one of the things I found particularly striking about our encounter. The Tayos’ presence in Nairobi made visible a principle that we sometimes discuss abstractly: African institutions can draw upon African expertise from across national boundaries. The continent is endowed with huge reserves of academics, administrators, researchers, professionals, and intellectuals whose talents do not have to be constrained within the confines of the country where they received their training. The transfer of such talent does not necessarily make one country poor. Ideally, it creates another connection in an expanding continental network. It is even more fitting to do so in the case of the Adventist University of Africa due to the fact that the institution is broader in scope than the nation-state within which it operates. Being located in Nairobi, the AUA is an institution that caters to students from various nations in Africa and even beyond Africa. The Adventist University of Africa takes pride in having students hailing from more than thirty-four different nationalities. The vision of the university is postgraduate studies, research, leadership, Christianity, and service. In other words, it is easy to visualize the institution of the university not only as a Kenyan university but also as a member of the African intellectual community.
This is where my personal encounter began to assume a larger intellectual meaning. I have always been interested in the university as more than an educational institution. Universities are among the most important spaces in which societies imagine their futures. They train professionals, produce knowledge, preserve memories, question established assumptions, and create relationships that may last for decades. But in Africa, universities have an additional responsibility. They must help Africans understand one another. The colonial map divided the continent into political territories, and those territories subsequently developed different educational systems, intellectual traditions, professional networks, and national priorities. The borders became real, but they should never become intellectual walls; the university can help to prevent that.
When a Nigerian scholar works in Kenya, when a Kenyan student studies with a Nigerian professor, when researchers from West and East Africa collaborate, or when postgraduate students from different African countries share a classroom, something more significant than academic exchange is taking place. They are learning Africa from one another. They are discovering differences that cannot be understood from textbooks alone, while also discovering similarities that national boundaries can conceal. The classroom becomes a small laboratory of a continental encounter. Friendships formed there may eventually become research collaborations; research collaborations may become institutional partnerships; institutional partnerships may create new opportunities for the younger generations. This, to me, is one of the more practical meanings of Pan-Africanism in the twenty-first century.
Pan-Africanism cannot remain only a historical vocabulary associated with political movements and the great figures of an earlier generation. It must also become a practice of intellectual cooperation. It must be visible in the movement of scholars, students, ideas, research, publications, technologies, and institutional innovations across the continent. It must be visible in African universities learning from one another and in African scholars recognizing that the intellectual problems of the continent cannot always be neatly divided according to national borders. Thus, my encounter with Grace and Ademola in Nairobi offered a small, almost intimate illustration of this possibility. It was not a conference, a diplomatic summit, or a formal Pan-African gathering. It was simply a meeting between friends and colleagues. Yet perhaps that is precisely where the most enduring forms of continental connection begin. Grand institutions are built through thousands of ordinary relationships, and intellectual communities are sustained by encounters that may initially appear too small to matter.
The significance of Ademola’s transition from Babcock University to AUA also lies in the continuity of institutional values. Both universities are situated within the Seventh-day Adventist educational tradition, where education is linked to questions of character, service, leadership, and responsibility. His movement from one institution to another therefore carries with it not only administrative experience but an accumulated understanding of what it means to lead a faith-based university. At AUA, this experience enters a postgraduate institution whose mandate places considerable emphasis on developing leaders and strengthening the intellectual and professional capacities needed by African societies.
Leadership, on the other hand, must never be seen merely as occupying a position. The strength of a university does not depend on the fact that a Vice-Chancellor is holding that position. Leadership acquires meaning where it helps in building up institutions that will survive beyond individuals. This leadership is shown by the nature of the educational programs that are offered, the opportunities afforded to students, the conditions provided for researchers, the honesty of the institutional processes, the relations of the university with its surroundings, and the capacity to produce graduates who in turn will contribute to society. This is why Grace’s role at AUA is also important. A university cannot claim a serious intellectual future without investing in research. But research does not depend only on scholars who have ideas. Research requires systems that will enable the development of grants, ethics, collaborations, publications, mentoring, and knowledge transfer. Grace’s role in research and grants development is important as it touches on one of the most critical aspects of the future of the African university, which needs to develop the capacity to create knowledge rather than simply consuming it.
The conversation in Nairobi consequently made me think about the relationship between leadership and knowledge. Africa does not lack educated people. Nor is it bereft of capable academics, researchers, entrepreneurs, professionals, artists, and intellectuals. One of the persistent questions has been that of how these human resources could be systematized into sustainable structures of knowledge generation and transformation of society. The university plays a crucial role in this regard, as it brings together youth, who are only starting their professional careers, with seasoned scholars who have acquired decades of experience. The university, properly conceived, is thus an institution of intergenerational responsibility. Eventually, those of us who have been in universities for much of our lives come to realize that the greatest inheritance is not the office one has held. It lies in the students we have taught, the ideas we have generated, the institutions we have built, the younger scholars we have mentored, and the intellectual community we have fostered.
Perhaps this explains why meeting the Tayos in Nairobi felt so deeply personal. I was seeing, in a new geographical setting, another chapter of a journey that I had known primarily through Nigeria. I was seeing how an academic career can cross borders without abandoning its roots. I was seeing how one university can become connected to another through the movement of people. Most importantly, I was reminded that intellectual friendships have their own geography. Nor do they have to stay in their original location. It was also heartening for us to hear this story in Nairobi in a period when the debates around Africa’s future are getting more and more focused on Africa’s ability to create its own institutional structures. We discuss a great deal about infrastructure, technology, investment, trade, good governance, and economic development. These are all important issues, but at a deeper level is the issue of capacity building in humans. Universities have to be an important part of the answer and yet not fall into intellectual isolation.
The university of the future in Africa must have its feet planted firmly on the ground in Africa while maintaining global connections. It will have to be familiar with the culture and history of its societies, but at the same time interact with global scholarship. This is why AUA’s continental orientation matters. Its location in Nairobi is Kenyan, but its intellectual ambition reaches beyond Kenya. Its students come from different parts of Africa; its programs engage professional and theological questions; its mission connects education with leadership and service. In such a setting, the arrival of a Nigerian academic leader is not an incidental development. It is part of the larger circulation of African intellectual capital. And so, when I think back on the meeting, I do not remember only the photographs, the conversation, or the pleasure of seeing familiar faces again. I remember the larger meaning that emerged almost imperceptibly from the encounter. Nigeria and Kenya seemed less like two distant national spaces and more like two points on a much larger intellectual map. Babcock and AUA became connected through a person whose career had passed through both. Grace’s research responsibilities added another dimension to the connection. Friendship became a bridge between institutions, and institutions became windows into the possibilities of a more connected Africa.
I left with gratitude—not only for the warmth of old relationships but for what the meeting represented. Africa’s intellectual future will be built in many places and through many kinds of people. It will be built in classrooms and laboratories, in libraries and research centers, in universities and communities. It will also be built through the movement of African scholars across African borders and through the relationships that make such movement meaningful. But perhaps, then, the value of such a gathering in Nairobi lies precisely in its not being a total picture of the future of higher learning in Africa. It certainly is not. It offers an insight into what that future may hold when Africans come to know each other as partners in a common quest for knowledge. That was, for me, the quiet grace of that meeting. A bond made in Nigeria had taken a different form in Kenya. A university experience that had been through Babcock University was now being lived out at the Adventist University of Africa. A scholar had brought his expertise beyond national boundaries, while another scholar was engaged in building up research capabilities. All of that amid an encounter between two old friends in Nairobi.
Bola Ahmed Tinubu And The Art Of Political Engineering
Opinion
What does it mean to be a good political leader? This is one fundamental question that straddles political philosophy and political science. Political theorists have always been concerned with the idea of the political community and how its leadership can facilitate social harmony for further socioeconomic development. This makes the question of leadership a very critical one for democratic theory, and the determination of the essence of democracy and good governance.
All across the world, there are a series of indices by which the characteristic features of good leadership are determined. For instance, the human development index references a composite achievement of political leadership in terms of the living standards of the citizens. For many years, the top positions have always been the preserves of the Scandinavian and European countries, from Finland and Norway to the Netherlands and Germany. The highest performing African countries are not only interspersed within the index, they also constitute the bulk of the countries that make up the bottom rung of the list.
Such indices and indicators of poverty and prosperity make the determination of leadership even all the more interesting and sometimes confounding especially in a country like Nigeria that carries the burden of geopolitical regional and continental possibilities and challenges. Since her return to democratic experimentation in 1999, Nigeria’s search for a good political leader has become redoubled especially given that Nigeria’s postcolonial and post-independence predicaments have become even more grinding for millions of average Nigerians. As we drive slowly and steadily towards another general elections in 2027, the discourse around leadership and the future of Nigeria has become even more accentuated. The apprehension about the impending democratic decision process is not only palpable but also fundamentally existential. Millions are asking whether their political and electoral choices this time around would be defining enough to swing Nigeria’s political, and hence economic, fortunes.
And at the very heart of that democratic apprehension is the possibility that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu will return to political power for another four years. Or that the opposition will be able to wrest power from him either jointly in strategic concert or singly through individual political and charismatic appeal. We must concede: within the force-field of the typical gains and pains that necessarily attend root and branch brand of structural adjustment grounded reforms, things are very difficult in Nigeria. The indices for multidimensional poverty are depressing. Millions have also been traumatized by insecurity from banditry and insurgency. Then there are the severe macroeconomic expressions of a governance system that is struggling to make sense of Nigeria’s oscillating fortunes. No one can envy any political leader who makes the decision to take on the heavy burden of shouldering Nigeria’s predicament at this moment in time. I do not envy such a leader given my background in governance, policy, and institutional reform. While I have been trying to make sense of the Nigerian civil service system, the President of Nigeria is trying to make sense of the political and economic dynamics of making Nigeria work. That is enormous. But then, people can argue that those who present themselves for leadership positions cannot be pitied because they had a sense of what it would entail, and they presumed that they had what it takes to steer the nation out of her challenges. This is a good argument that must be put in proper context.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu knew the task involved in managing the affairs of Nigeria. He has been involved at several political levels of the Nigeria’s unfolding for decades; from being in the trench of the pro-democracy movement, locally and in exile, to being in the legislative arm as a senator, to governing a state, and in the management of party politics and its combustible dynamics at challenging times, and participating as a core stakeholder in geopolitical policymaking at the highest levels through numerous but disruptive transitions. When he brazenly insisted that it was his turn to get to that highest level of overseeing the Nigeria’s fate—when he served the notice to all political agents that “Èmi lókàn” (it’s now my turn)—we have all missed the courage embedded in that political decision. And this for me is where we must start in our reflection on President Tinubu’s performance after four years in office, and whether or not his administration deserves a second term.
Given the heat of Nigeria’s pressing situation, we often gloss over the provenance and complexity of current predicaments. Nigeria did not become the way it is under Tinubu. In other words, Nigeria under the Tinubu administration is already a composite of complex and complicated dysfunction and debilitation. From independence to date, the political and developmental circumstances of the Nigerian state have kept fluctuating so much so that millions of Nigerians have been the worse for it. The commencement of the democratic experiment has not brought much relief. The issue is not to therefore articulate platitudes and excuses on why the Tinubu administration could not be considered to be magicians who are expected to transform Nigeria overnight. On the contrary, the critical analysis lies elsewhere.
This is where my interest in political philosophy enables an analysis that deepens the understanding of Bola Ahmed Tinubu beyond the usual political commentaries that often dissolve into petty and abusive vitriols. How does political philosophy enable us to figure the political style and leadership dexterity of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the president of the Nigerian state at this moment in time? One critical lens derives from the trajectory of his political evolution from a pro-democracy agitator to the sitting president of Nigeria. This alone is sufficient to necessitate an astute study of his political tenacity. In this regard, he has earned a space among the political avatars that have bestroden the Nigerian space. Only few leaders ever could survive Nigeria’s chaotic and violent political space not to talk of ascending to the zenith of its governance structure. My interest, however, is not just taking on a measure of his political unraveling. Rather, I am intrigued by what his over three decades of political actions could reveal to us in terms of a distinct framework of political leadership, a schema of political power and the dynamics of nation-building.
It is very clear to me that, as a Tinubu acolyte, western political understanding and global parameters of leadership will sit uneasily on Tinubu. This is not something to be lamented, because a leader is a function of the confluence of context, ideology, temperament and temporal situatedness. There is a level of unfairness in judging a postcolonial leadership by the parameters of western political theory or democratic institutionalism. I will hazard the hypothesis further that, compared to Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Tinubu will still not be able to measure up in terms of a leadership grounded in value credentials. This is because Tinubu is already bedeviled by serious reputational negatives that derive from his political rising. However, the crucial difference between Awolowo and Tinubu is simply that the latter is at the helms of affairs of the Nigerian state at a time when it is most difficult to be a president. And this is doubly so for him because he has not only a running knowledge of the dynamics of the Nigerian predicaments; he also specifically asked to be president.
And yet, Tinubu has converted his political position into a stance of strength. His enigmatic persona, I insist, derives from his capacity for political engineering. This is an amorphous term that I need to unravel to capture my measure of respect for someone I consider to be a typology of a good leader. The rise of Tinubu from pro-democracy activists to governor of Logos State to political kingmaker and ultimately to president reveals a Machiavellian streak that speaks to his capacity to balance shifting alliances, strategically navigate complex and fragmented ethno-regional landscapes, and preside over an immense political machinery that maneuvers between loyalists and rivals. He has become the ultimate Machiavellian strategist who is not just passively deft in deflecting oppositions, allegations and controversies. On the contrary, his strategic competences and alliances are meant to forge a pathway for rethinking Nigeria’s future.
This is a political persona that defies easy location in existing populist or bureaucratic leadership typology. We have a leader who has to ride through the rough and tough waters of the Nigerian political terrain and democratic context to be able to lay the foundation of a new Nigeria. This demands not just a visionary and ideological framework but also a transactional realism that demands systematic patronage structures which leverage the assistance of loyalists and experts around whom nation-building and political engineering can be facilitated. In the political discourse literature, the apt term for this patronage is political gardening—a framework of harnessing competences, expertise and alliances that could be deployed for political and non-political objectives. What makes Tinubu’s political rising fascinating and formidable is the emergence of a political machinery founded on political gardening, his capacity to headhunt political, economic and technocratic capacities that transcend generational and regional limitations.
This political machinery has not been founded for the sake of merely obtaining power for the sake of power. This is a difficult argument to sell given the generations of political power brokers who have passed through Aso Rock and left Nigeria worse than they met it. But then, why headhunt a critical mass of technocratic brain powers if the endgame was simply to seize and exploit political power? If this harnessing of technocratic competence worked in his grand modernizing plan for Lagos State, why would Nigeria be any different with the same strategy? This is where the Machiavellian label deserts our characterization of Tinubu. This is because Machiavelli’s understanding of political power was for the maintenance of the state’s boundaries; Tinubu’s understanding of political power dwells at the very tight juncture where institutional patronage and strategic resilience must meet visionary policymaking, and power consolidation must be balanced by political engineering.
Four years are not sufficient for balancing power play while trying to inject structural reform into the Nigerian system. But what is more, for a nation-state that has been run into a complicated national dysfunction, there is no gainsaying the urgent necessity of swallowing hard pills of stringent policies like the fuel subsidy removal, the unification of the foreign exchange rates and the tightening of the monetary policy in ways that seek to eliminate price instability as an act in economic stabilization that has crystallized. These are a few of the policies already put in place to alleviate the policy errors of the past and achieve fiscal growth and accountability.
Let us return to the critical comparison between Awolowo and Tinubu. We are all apprised of the legacy of Chief Obafemi Awolowo especially in terms of human and infrastructural development. Tinubu’s legacy is still in the making, and the quest for a second term in office will go a long way not only to douse the immediate threat of political opposition (directed towards reputational damage) but to also allow free avenues for the consolidation of the foundations of transformational policies. To secure a spot in the annals of political leadership in Nigeria, Tinubu is faced with the challenge of converting his political strategies and pragmatic orientation towards not just stabilizing the fractured Nigerian state but also laying a policy architecture of economic recovery and growth.
. Olaopa, a Professor of Public Administration, is the Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission, Abuja.
Opinion
The Art Of Forgiveness
The Glitterer wishes to make not so comprehensive remarks about a subject to which he considers affixing a comprehensive title. In other words, the Glitterer, this Glitterer, wants to give a very short, brief speech or comment about a topic, but he wants to give that speech, this comment, that is, a massive, official-sounding, and deeply detailed title. Herein lies the Glitterer’s art: His planning to make a very short, minor comment about a topic, but he is going to dress it up with a massive, incredibly complex, and official-sounding title to make it seem much important than it actually is. Is this composer sounding humorous or ironic here? Are his sentences trying to describe a humorous or ironic contradiction in someone’s behaviour? Are the sentences describing or trying to describe a picture of someone who cares a lot about the “packaging” (the title, the chosen title) but is not putting much substance into the actual “content”, the actual “substance”, the actual “illustration” (the speech, the comment)?
Now, let the composer terminate the perceived (or unnoticed) suspense his art may have generated so far; for it is time for the Glitterer to end the perceived (or unseen) tension and mystery that his composition has created up until this point.
His purpose is to put into form presently certain of his thoughts or ideas on the point or mystery of forgiveness and its art with respect to our politics. How do we tell the frank and stimulating story of the unforgiving spirit of every political gladiator in our land? Very recently a handsome columnist/regular Guardian contributor whose association with me is handsomely favourable sent me the following newspaper report of ages ago:
“How I Became a Drug Abuser and Trafficker – Gov Tinubu of Lagos”.
The story was published as the lead (front page) report of PM News of Monday, May 17, 1999.
The Glitterer feels the need to affix (or re-affix?) the comprehensive report to a Nigerian newspaper again as he hereby does in this column – somewhat in its original form. The Glitterer is doing so genuinely to indicate that we should not be indifferent to the art of forgiveness, and the comprehensive remarks it surely will generate. Here is the massive report:
“Lagos State Governor, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, yesterday made a shocking revelation of his past, confessing that he became a drug abuser and trafficker during his younger years.
“In an emotional and candid interview with PM News, the governor said he got involved in drug abuse and trafficking while he was still a young man, a period he described as one of the darkest chapters of his life.
“I became a drug abuser and trafficker, Tinubu said. It was a difficult time for me, but I have since turned my life around and chosen the path of service to my people and to Nigeria”.
“The Governor, who is also the national leader of the All Progressive Congress (APC) said his experience with drugs exposed him to the darker side of life, but it also taught him valuable lessons about the dangers of addiction and the need for a better society.
“I don’t say this for sympathy, he said. ‘I say it so that others, especially our youths, can learn from my mistakes. Drugs destroy lives, families and communities. I thank God for giving me a second chance and I will continue to work for a Nigeria where our young people are protected and given real opportunities.
“The admission has since sparked wide reactions across the country, with many Nigerians commending the governor for his honesty.”
The confession of the then Governor of Lagos State who is now the President of Nigeria, our mysteriously great and greatly mysterious country, is the proof of a life and curiosity of a man whose curiosity is indisputable and which will remain indisputable in the consciousness of those who are studying him earnestly with the intention to bring him down. Bola Tinubu’s confession proves that he is an undeniably curious man, and this trait will always be recognised by the people who are closely studying him to find a way to ruin him. In other words, this confession serves as evidence of his life choices and his undeniable habit of being curious or investigative. His political enemies or critics who are closely watching his every move to find a weakness to destroy him, cannot deny how curious and sharp he is. Even his fiercest critics who belong to the brotherhood of journalists must acknowledge this in the same way that their readers, and the man’s political enemies cannot dispute his sharp intellect.
If President Bola Ahmed Tinubu were a devout Roman Catholic, he would have gone to a priest as a penitent to confess his sins or alleged history with drug abuse and trafficking. Without a doubt his sins would have been forgiven. Instead he went public, holding a conflicted sense of remorse and optimism that the public – acting as his confessor – would forgive him which they ultimately did. This is the strategy of a masterful performer – one that cannot be faulted if we view politics as an art form meant to be accepted at face value rather than over-analysed.
This is the comfortable, good-humoured presumption of this writer, columnist and composer that cannot really be queried in the spirit of art that is a pudding which is a pudding, and that our only concern with it is to taste and swallow it – whether or not our tongues wholesomely accept it.
In closing, the Glitterer wishes to ask as follows: In publishing Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s curious alluded-to confession in 1999, did the four (ex-) guerilla journalists – Bayo Onanuga, Babafemi Ojudu, Dapo Olorunyomi and Kunle Ajibade, who co-founded PM News – deliberately lob their journalistic grenade into Tinubu’s enemies’ lines just on general principles to help him stay on course for the pursuit of the biggest prize in the land (which he eventually got, and wants to re-get, by all means possible and impossible)? What or who gives me the temerity to tender this question? Answer: My zeal and enthusiasm for truth and nothing but the truth, and my open-mindedness and objectivity, and other things art demands of/from all of us pushers of the mighty pen – and readers of our jocular or serious texts.
Opinion
Repositioning Public Service Through Professionalised HRM For Value, Impact In Nigeria
In a rapidly changing world that is becoming as complex as it is interesting, public administration and the public service have been confronted with the fundamental challenge of not just keeping up with the interesting developments especially in technologies and workplace dynamics. They are also tasked with preempting unforeseen challenges arising from functioning in a world of acute polycrisis.
All over the world, public service systems are always in a modernising mode that constantly sees to the structural and institutional reform of the workplace and its human resource function. This is especially the case because of the charge of performance and productivity that determines the utility and optimal relevance of the system. A country depends on the public service and its workplace capacity readiness to deliver on its mandate of performance and productivity. This translates into the capacity of the public service system to enhance the developmental capability of the state through achieving, among other things, democratic service delivery to the citizens.
Institutional reform, given these complex dynamics, becomes therefore a most significant endeavor that requires the collaborative networks of individual, governmental, non-governmental and non-state actors and agencies. Over the years, the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management (CIPM) has defined itself as an organisation that has intentionally committed itself to the many ramifications of engaging with the institutional reform of the public sector and its public administration system in Nigeria. This is one critical reason why every edition of its international conference remains a significant event within the larger space of administrative and governance reforms in Nigeria.
The 58th conference runs under the theme “Repositioning for Value and Impact.” When we connect with the theme of the 57th 2025 conference—Reimagining the New World of Work,” we see a professional body which, through deliberate curation of its annual conference themes, demonstrates a steadfast commitment to anchoring vital discourses, driving contemporary trends in management practice, addressing the paradigm shifts and emergent trends that are shaping the trajectory of the HR profession in time and space.
It therefore becomes quite easy to see how the CIPM becomes a very critical institutional reform partner with the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC) – and by extension the federal civil service -in the trenches of revitalizing the public service workplace in Nigeria.
Since the inauguration of the 10th Commission in December 2023, the FCSC has been running with the objective spelt out clearly by the President: to “competently facilitate the transformation, reorientation and digitization of the federal bureaucracy to enable, and not stifle, growth and enhance private sector participation in the development of the Nigerian economy, in full adherence to the Renewed Hope agenda.”
This objective is not only founded on the constitutional mandate of the FCSC, it also recognises the Commission’s role as the gatekeeping mechanism for transforming the professional status of the federal civil service. The Commission therefore, in driving the agenda of professionalising its secretariat, to transform into an expert HR hub in the Nigerian civil service; and in at once deepening its gatekeeping role, we see great value in the evolving strategic partnership with CIPM and other development partners in the institutional reform business.
The public service was indeed inherited as a value-based institution that was dedicated to the implementation of the policy designs of the government towards the end of good governance.
Unfortunately, however, and as one of the migrated structures in Nigeria, the public service system arrived in Nigeria without its value basis. In other words, Nigeria (and many other African states) inherited the system as a bare structural edifice that was not deconstructed in terms of its core values and the extent to which this connects to a democratic ethos that the citizens need to enjoy the good life.
It was therefore very easy for the public service to become acutely bureaucratic and therefore debilitated. The presence of what I have called bureau-pathological features—over-bloated workspace, generalist orientation, disarticulated pay and compensation incentive structure, breakdown of the internal control mechanism, weakened public values and its associated codes of ethics, the system’s accountability framework inclusive, low technology penetration, etc.—immensely contributed to how the civil service eventually degenerated into a bureaucratic paradigm that services the statist character of the Nigeria state. In other words, this bureaucratic paradigm not only strengthens the power of the civil service in relations to other institutions, but it also compromises its neutrality, anonymity, impartiality, and accountability through its use as a means of political intervention in the economy and society.
Restoring the value orientation of the public service therefore becomes a significant reform initiative that is connected with the overall task of modernising its structures, processes and procedures.
Improving operations requires making them faster via flexible ways of, say, budgeting, managing, accounting and delivering service. In this sense, public management is transformed into a strategic framework for getting the work done. Such a strategic framework is therefore founded on the management of a dynamic workforce to make the public service what it ought to be. To reposition the civil service therefore involves moving the public service workplace and its HR functions towards a more professionalised and strategic HRM within framework oriented to the vision of restoring competency-based HR function and management.
Since the HR function is cogent in achieving performance and productivity, there is no doubt that the professionalisation of the HR functions is fundamental to transforming the workplace. However, the core public manager-professionals need to know that to do this, human reonsibility of HR departments
Line managers and other managerial executives now require people management skills and competence to facilitate effectiveness and efficiency. This also relocates the HR function from the back to the front office within framework of strategic partnership with management. And rethinking the HR function implies a significant level of reform. For instance, at the basic level, it is no longer productive to treat HR in terms of personnel management, and its preoccupation with the passive role of privileging rules, regulations and procedures rather than developing and pursuing policies in manners that extract performance results and productivity bargains from people and from the processes. This automatically affects the current practice of staff performance evaluation and appraisal which is very vague about what is being assessed and rewarded, or even how appraisal should be directed towards performance assessment and competences, rather than as a mere subjective protocol.
Next, to become the ultimate change agents in the reform of the public service, the HR manager is not only expected to facilitate the establishment of a new HR model that will harness performance management system towards the larger objective of installing a new national productivity paradigm, not just in the public sector, but in the national economy.
They are also essentially required to deepen the skills and competences with regard to risk management in ways that instigate action research as a component of management cum operation research and organisation development (OD) in the MDAs. This will also enable the HR to institute a learning culture that challenges the bureaucratic status quo, and helps it champions specific cultural transformations directed at translating desirable culture and public service values into public managers behaviour.
All the above considerations have significant implications for the understanding of the workplace and its HR dynamics. What I consider to be the most urgent workplace consideration in the face of the daunting flux of transformations of the nature of work is what we can call the people-issue. This is the issue of how persons and personnel remain the focus of whatever reforms, changes and adjustment that information, data, knowledge and technologies are forcing on the reconstitution and reimagining of the civil service system, the nature of the work and of the workplace.
The other dimension of this people-issue is how the public service workplace is regenerated—through the challenges enforced by the COVID-19 pandemic—to mainstream into its operations, technologies and new managerial procedures and processes that shift the paradigms in terms of redefining citizens engagement by placing the citizens-as-customers at the centre of service delivery designs and its value-chain
The other dimension of this people-issue is how the public service workplace is regenerated—through the challenges enforced by the COVID-19 pandemic—to mainstream into its operations, technologies and new managerial procedures and processes that shift the paradigms in terms of redefining citizens engagement by placing the citizens-as-customers at the centre of service delivery designs and its value-chain.
This is a development that many advanced economies already integrated into their public sector optimal functions and now take for granted.
Rethinking the civil service workplace as a value-driven and optimally impactful site requires focusing the change management dynamics towards answering several questions:
What are the key actions needed to ensure a better match between HR requirements and available employee?
How can we ensure that the department has highly skilled employees in the future in order to address changing needs?
How can the FCSC and partners like the CIPM work with line ministries/ agencies to attract employees with the right competences for deployment to critical areas in the department?
What is required to create the right professional environment that could help to breed a new generation of public managers with professional and confidence to demand and give excellent services?
How can the oversupply of employee in certain areas of the department be re-directed to address other areas with shortages?
If training and retraining the oversupply is not an option, how can these employees be phased out?
How can under-representation of designated groups/cadre of ethnic groups be addressed professionally(in view of Federal Character), with due regard given to merit?
How can the productivity of current employees be consistently improved, monitored and evaluated as basis for interventions?
These key questions could serve as the instigator for modelling distinct strategic reform action framework broken into reform stages that could transform the HR functions of the civil service system.
The first stage will correspond to the ongoing Personnel Audit and Skills Gap Analysis (PASGA) project, which provides an unprecedented opportunity for the strengthening of the manpower requirements of the federal civil service and the imperative need for a reevaluated and upgraded service-wide job roles.
This personnel audit would however be consolidated by the establishment of a centralized human resource information database that is similar to the current Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) for monitoring workforce recruitment and maintenance (against the scourge of ghost workers, fake employment, abuse of FCSC delegated powers by MDAs, for instance). The second stage is driven by the imperative of identifying competency frameworks that will be the basis of professionalizing the HR function of the workplace. This comes from proactively designing and executing of merit-based recruitment exercises through, for example, the deployment of digital instruments and procedures. The third stage corresponds to the operationalization of the performance management system that, for instance, works with key performance indicators rather than the generic annual performance review, while critically transforming the compensation package to draw a critical mass of talented workforce with scarce skills that are badly required to recalibrate the organizational IQ of the service. This is also enabled significantly by the PASGA project in terms of the way the audit reveals the skills and competence gaps in the HR dynamic that will drive the meritocratic recruitment efforts. The critical expertise of organizations like the CIPM becomes crucial in the last stage that demands the establishment of a cadre of HR professionals that is mandated to work with a public value charter that guides the measurement and evaluation of performance and productivity.
It becomes very clear that the CIM conference and its theme of value-driven institutional impact speaks enormously to the direction that global administrative and HR practices are headed in the twenty-first century. It also significantly positions the CIPM itself as a foresighted organization that stands shoulder to shoulder with the FCSC in delineating critical reform direction, change management and structural action frameworks that the civil service system requires as a matter of urgency in transforming the civil service into a world class institution for achieving a formidable democratic governance in Nigeria.
. Olaopa, a Professor of Public Administration, and the Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission, Abuja delivered this speech as Special Guest at the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria (CIPM) 58th international conference in Abuja on September 22, 2026.
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