Appointing agency heads on merit
By Chuks Nwagbara
Wednesday April 25 , 2012
Speaking during the Presidential Award Ceremony for the first batch of winners of the national YOUWIN (Youth Enterprise With Innovation in Nigeria) business plan competition on April 12, 2012 in Abuja, the President announced that all appointments to fill the headship of tenured public agencies shall henceforth be based on merit. Mr. President directed further that the vacant positions of chief executives of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) be advertised to enable all qualified Nigerians to apply.
This policy pronouncement, coming as it were from the Chief of State himself, represents perhaps, the most fundamental and profound commitment to one of the key precepts of good governance. And, it is a most welcome development that will enable our public sector to attract the best professionals.Meritocracy, or the filling of commanding positions based on competency and competitiveness, is the sure way to go in order to ensure the superior performance on all the fronts that are pivotal to the transformation of our national economy and the realisation of our Vision 20:2020 aspirations.
But, beyond this presidential directive to advertise and fill the vacant positions in the afore-mentioned agencies, the Government must go the whole hog and entrench it as a standard policy context and governance paradigm. Therefore, the President’s proclamation should be translated into guidelines for a definite or clear-cut succession plan that also elaborates the criteria and process for the transparent, open and competitive filling of imminent vacancies in our public agencies. And, be enacted into a law.
All too often, it appears as though the government is caught napping, unaware of and/or unready when many of the topmost positions fall vacant, and hence has to resort to interim leaderships by ‘acting heads’. This practice, which is rife, is certainly inimical to the eTake, for instance, three of the nation’s foremost agricultural research institutes which should be in the vanguard of the agriculturally driven expansion and growth of the nation’s economy, as envisaged in this administration’s Transformation Agenda, have been without substantive heads for the past six months since the tenures of their last Executive Directors ended.
True, internal and external adverts were placed for the positions of chief executives of National Root Crops Research Institute (NRCRI), Umudike, Abia State; National institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR), Benin, Edo State and National Cereals Research Institute (NCRI), Badeggi, Niger State; and written and oral interviews were also conducted by the Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria (ARCON) between September 27 – 28, 2011 and three persons short-listed for each of the institutes and forwarded to the Presidency via the Ministry of Agriculture shortly after the exercise. Yet, nothing has been heard since then about the appointment of permanent heads of these agencies that are so vital for the nation’s desired agricultural revolution.
This delay is unconscionable. It has given room for all sorts of conjectures, manoeuvering and lobbying by some of the short-listed and even dropped candidates, probably aided and abetted by officials of the Ministry and Presidency in low and high positions. Why, we ask, should the supervising ministry go outside the guidelines to invite some (and not all) of the short-listed with some of the non-short-listed candidates for ‘interactions’ and further assessments?
This has given rise to fears that the best candidates may not be appointed after all. What is going on with regard to the research institutes appointment is a metaphor of how not to go about the filling of top leadership and management positions in the public sector. We, therefore, call on Mr. President to initiate the passage of a bill within the ambit of the Constitution to codify the policy of a defined, merit-based and transparent process; one replete with the criteria, sequence, and timelines for advertising, interviewing, short-listing, and appointment of new chief executives of public agencies.
We also urge the President to immediately call up the file on the pending appointments of the chief executives of the three agricultural research institutes and announce his picks for each of them. We dare to suggest that in doing that he should be guided only by the results of the interviews of September last year and the merit-based recommendations that ensued from it. We believe that this is one way the President can send a loud and clear message that his April 12th proclamation on meritocracy represents a seriously sacrosanct and inviolable policy thrust.
Nwagbara writes from Lagos
