HOLD your breath, I have to return to my organic beat, Abuja today because there is a great deal of politicking and even petty revisionism going on there and many residents aren’t taking note. Even the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal’s (PEPT) judicial pronouncement on Abuja without reference to earlier judicial precedents on the same issue by Supreme Court has raised more questions than answers.
Meanwhile before the Supreme Court’s judicial pronouncement on the FCT (Abuja) 25% conundrum, let me appeal to all agitated stakeholders that the Supreme Court of Nigeria has pronounced on the subject before. We can only wait for its new interpretation of the law this time before cross-referencing on the same issue. My only appeal is that Nigeria’s capital, Abuja being advertised as the 47th state has been there as our national capital for 47 years. The capital project is one of the robust achievements in post –independence era. And so our political leaders today should not exploit the strategic ambiguity in the Constitution’s Sections 299-304 to destroy what is now emerging as our Unity Capital.
It is our Capital and as I noted the other day in an article here, the current president has begun to restore stakeholder confidence in the Territory we almost lost to the shenanigans and peccadillos of some regional and provincial irredentists. I had then noted in that same vein that the current president had implemented a 2018 judgment President Muhammadu Buhari had refused to obey on appointment of an indigene of Abuja as a member of the Federal Executive Council. That has been implemented.
What is more, the same President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has broken the jinx of northern domination of appointment of FCT Ministers. Nyesom Wike is the first Minister from the South since 1976 when the late General Murtala proclaimed and legalised Abuja as Nigeria’s capital. All appointees to the Office from the South had been Ministers of state.
And so as we await more political actions on Abuja after the Supreme Court’s pronouncement on the status of the Capital, I would like to draw attention to another ministerial inertia by the immediate past Minister of FCT, Mohammed Musa Bello: failure to establish the Federal Capital Territory’s Civil Service Commission created by an Act of the National Assembly since August 2018. This is one Commission that would have enhanced the status of the bureaucracy of the FCT Administration. The 47-year-old capital is still work in progress as I have written several times (even here).
It is quite unfortunate that the structure of the bureaucracy to run a full-fledged Capital has been weak and that is the reason the superstructure has also been unreliable. The Constitutional provisions on FCT have been vague and the Ministers in the Temple of Justice often interpret the provisions so curiously and dubiously to satisfy different political interests at different dispensations. And where the Constitution mandates the political leaders and National Assembly members to make a law to define Administrative and Political structure of the Territory and its six Area Councils, they have failed the nation since 1999.
Section 303 of the 1999 Constitution provides that: The Federal Capital Territory, Abuja shall comprise six area councils and the administrative and political structure thereof shall be as provided by an Act of the National Assembly.
Since 1999, the presidency, the FCTA and National Assembly have failed to work on a Bill to fulfill the requirement of the organic law on “administrative and political structure” of the FCT. The Ministry of the FCT (MFCT) was scrapped in 2004 and replaced with a Presidential Order, which established the eight Mandate Secretariats. The establishment of the Secretariats and appointments of the Secretaries to man the Secretariats (equivalent of Commissioners in the 36 States) are at the instance of the Governor of the State, the President.
The Wike’s Mandate Secretaries were sworn in last Tuesday in Abuja. The President’s approval is needed for this to happen. The Minister has no power to appoint his Secretaries without the president’s approval. The Mandate Secretariat is an equivalent of a state ministry. Yet they can’t be called ministries. The Secretary who serves as Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice of the State, according to the implementation schedule of the 2004 Presidential Order is addressed as General Counsel while the Civil Service Head of the Legal Secretariat is addressed as Solicitor-General of the FCT.
There are Education Secretary, Health and Human Services Secretary, etc. In all of these, there is no legal backing from the National Assembly. And what is worse, there has been no agency for the recruitment, discipline and promotion of the FCT Civil Service. Yet, the civil and public servants of the FCT are not listed by the Federal Civil Service Commission. Despite this lacuna, since 2004 the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HCSF) has been posting Permanent Secretary to the FCT even as the Federal Civil Service Commission hasn’t been dealing with the civil servants there as a place where directors can regularly supply candidates for promotion to the prestigious consolidated salary cadre of Permanent Secretary.
In the same vein, there has been the technical arm of the FCTA, the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) that has been there as created by law since inception in 1976. In fact, the FCDA built the Territory. It is headed by an Executive Secretary appointed by the President. The Authority too has its own set of public servants who are subject to civil service of the federation rules and regulations.
In principle, the FCTA and FCDA employees are federal civil servants but in practice, when it comes to perquisites of office, both the Federal Civil Service of the Federation and the office of Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, which posts a Permanent Secretary to the FCT do not recognise them. This is a 47-year old curiosity and mystery about the Abuja civil servants who are neither federal nor state civil servants. Although a few artful and well connected ones have manipulated their way through the labyrinth of the federal civil service to become permanent secretaries, thanks to the dubious ways and means that feed corruption of the federal bureaucracy.
That is why the longest serving Minister of FCT (2015-2023) Bello should be condemned for failing to inaugurate the FCT Civil Service Commission as created by an Act of the National Assembly since 2018. Specifically, Acting President then Professor Yemi Osinbajo signed the Bill on August 17, 2018 but the FCT Minister frustrated its inauguration till the present.
On August 2, 2022, the Joint Unions Action Committee (JUAC) of the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA), the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) and the Satellite Towns Development Agencies (STDAs), had declared in a statement that it was set to mobilise all staff of the FCTA, the FCDA and the SDAs for a 40, 000-delegates march to compel the Minister of Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to, within 21 days, consider and direct the immediate implementation of the FCT-Civil Service Commission Act of 2018.
They had noted then that the Act, when implemented, would restore proper identity, status and career progression to the FCTA, FCDA and STDA staff just like their counterparts in other federal ministries, agencies and the 36 states.
JUAC stated in their letter (to the FCT Minister) signed on their behalf by the Chairman, Comrade Matilukuro Oluwakorede and Secretary-General Comrade Akuh Enojo Sunday, that, “the Joint Unions were poised and prepared to take all necessary action within the ultimatum of 21 days to ensure Management’s compliance with the various demands.
They stated that failure by the Minister and the FCTA Management to comply would constrain the Joint Unions “to direct all staff through their affiliate unions, to shut down the FCT Administration and the Office of the Honourable Minister pending the implementation of the various demands, especially the FCT Civil Service Commission.”
JUAC had then reminded the Minister that they were at the time superintending over 15 affiliate unions across the FCT, while they would leverage on existing Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the independent unions, including the Nigeria Medical Association, (NMA) and Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) to enforce their demands “should push come to shove.”
The Joint Unions expressed their disappointment with the manner the Minister and the FCTA have been handling their demands, stressing: “Without mincing words, we have recently observed with dismay that you can no longer be trusted by the unions and staff. Truly, your word is no longer your bond considering the avalanche of unfulfilled promises made to the FCT staff and the unions.
“Sir, you may please recall that we have approached you severally, calling your attention to the FCT-Civil Service Commission, which has been passed into law and gazetted since 2018. We compassionately appealed to you, while reminding you of the negative implications of the hurriedly-implemented Order 1 of 2004, which dissolved the Ministry of Federal Capital Territory.
“Besides the administrative lacuna created by the problem, the staff of the FCT Administration are increasingly losing their identity and career progression, especially with respect to the directorate cadre. This situation, no doubt, has resulted in, and indeed, encourages overbearing dispositions, officiousness and corporate high-handedness by some directors who feel their kernels were cracked by opportunistic benevolent spirits, thereby lording it over the less-privileged staff with unbridled impunity.”
The unions and staff of the FCTA drew the Minister’s attention to “the various fruitless correspondences” they had had with him regarding the issue among which were the JUAC letter, referenced JUAC/FCTA-STDAs/HM/AUGUST/2021/VLI/003, dated August 19, 2021, and others.
They equally drew the Minister’s attention to his promise to implement the Commission law during the last quarterly meeting, which he had not kept with less than one year to the end of the tenure of the administration. They recalled that the Joint Unions once carried out a nation-wide research on the Civil Service Structure and discovered with serious concerns that all the Federal and State Governments have their streamlined Civil Service Structure, which gives specific identity and status to their civil servants while FCTA is the only exception.
The system under the federal and the state structures provides them the opportunity to effectively and efficiently co-ordinate their activities, policies and programmes through the Federal and State Civil Service Commissions while FCTA remains the contraption that has lost its identity through the Presidential Order 1 of 2004.
The FCTA public servants have been sad that they have also lost their seniority status even to their juniors at the Federal level (Federal Civil Service staff), resulting in complex administrative confusion, despair and loss of faith and confidence in the system.
They maintained that the problem could be resolved if the Minister and the FCTA mustered the political will to implement the Federal Capital Territory Civil Service Commission Act to restructure the FCT Administration and its parastatal. Despite the threat and industrial actions, the Minister left in May 2023 without establishing the Commission. That is why Hurricane Wike, the FCT Minister should move fast to establish the FCT Civil Service Commission (FCSC). That development will enhance the status of the capital of the Federation.
Oloja is former editor of The Guardian newspaper and his column, Inside Stuff, runs on the back page of the newspaper on Sundays. The column appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Mondays.