A former Clerk of the Lagos State House of Assembly (LAHA) 0tunba Olusegun Abiru is an Ikorodu born technocrat and administrator per excellence. He retired from the State Centre of Excellence, after working meritoriously and unblemished for 33 years. No doubt, even in retirement, he is a golden fish that has no hidden place. This is evident in the fact that he has been contracted to deliver lectures both home and abroad to share his wealth of experience. Otunba Abiru, who retired few months back but not tired, took time out to talk to the duo of Adewale Ogunniran and Adebobola Alawode of IntegrityReporters on the challenges of service, life after retirement and sundry issues
Could you please let the readers have an idea of who Mr. Abiru is?
I was born on 6 August 1956, married with children. I attended Ago Ijaiye Primary School, Ebute-Metta after which I proceeded to Ansar Udeen High School in Surulere where I spent two years. From there, I went to Methodist Boys High School (The best school in Lagos State) and I finished in the 75/76 session.
I did my Advanced Level between 1977 and 1979, got admitted to study History at the University of Lagos, and graduated with BA Hons in 1982. I Did my National Youth Service Corps, NYSC at Ojuelegba Grammar School, Surulere. My Master’s degree is in Personnel Psychology.
After the compulsory service, I joined the Lagos State Civil Service in 1983, served the State Government for almost 33 years before I retired. I retired as the Clerk of the Lagos State House of Assembly, LAHA. I have a loving and beautiful wife with whom I am well pleased and four adorable children, who have always made me proud. Lest I forget I am also a lucky grandfather.
Which of the ministries did you cut your teeth with in the employment of the Lagos State Government?
During those days, the service was very interesting because I was lucky to have worked with people, who helped to shape my life, those that were very conscientious in the discharge of their duties. My first port of call was the Governor’s Office where I worked with the first civilian governor of the state, Alhaji Lateef Jakande, whom I think is still the barometer through which the performances of his successors are measured. A superlative and energetic performer. I think Governor Akinwunmi Ambode is on that path if he continues in the stride he has started. It will also surprise you that my first day in office, I closed between 10:30 and 11:00 pm; that was my first baptism. After working for a few months, I was later deployed to the Ministry of Finance. I worked with people that I regard as thoroughbred Public Servants.
Who were those thoroughbred public servants?
I worked with the likes of Mr. A.O Anjorin, Mr. F.A.O. Adeyemi, who later became the Secretary. The Head of Service, HoS, and I was also able to work with the late Shodipo and R.B.T Tinubu, who also got appointed as the HoS.
I also worked with a lot of people; Mr. A. T Olatunji, he is someone who you would like to work with and many others that I cannot mention. I have just mentioned the few ones because of the impact they had on my career.
How will you compare the Civil Service of today to some years past?
Thank you for that question. I just retired in August 2016 when I attained age 60. In that context I can say that I have experienced the Service when it was at its peak and again at its lowest ebb. There is a systemic failure. In those days, that is the early 80s, when I joined the Service there was what we called DIGNITY OF LABOUR. We were conscious of our responsibilities and determined to excel. There was this healthy rivalry among us then and there was no way you could work with those people earlier mentioned without being sufficiently proficient in the art of spoken and written English. In those days there were mentors. Your superior officers would call and discuss your work with you, highlighting your strengths and weaknesses in order for you to improve. You would be proud to be a Public Servant. The beauty of service then was that deployment to ministries/agencies of government was done without favour or punitive purposes. Through that process, I was able to work in virtually all ministries except the newly established ones around 2007 to the time I bowed out of the service. In those days, despite the fact that our salaries were painfully small, we were still hopeful and desirous of putting in our best for our dear state. In those days we struggled to board vehicles but because of the lean salary, I sometimes bought black oil that was being used to top my vehicle. It was really tough but there was hope in the horizon. Officers of today are too much in a hurry. They want to make money quickly. The job is of no interest in them except what they could get from the service. They have forgotten that their superior officers are watching those of them that are diligent and dutiful. There’s a compensatory system for industrious officers in the service and I happened to be a beneficiary of that system. One thing that distinguishes Lagos State from others is that salaries of workers are paid promptly and the current Governor has even improved on it by ensuring that it is paid before 25th of every month. Without being invidious, the Lagos State Public Service is perhaps the best in Africa and possibly second to United Nations Organization, UNO. The service delivery and innovations is unequivocally the best in the country. Let me also use this medium to refute one dangerous misconceived notion that public service is a citadel for lazy brains. It is not correct. When you have the opportunity to interact with them, you will be amazed of the level of intelligence and scope of knowledge of civil servants. Some deliberately opted for public service as a matter of choice and not compulsion or frustration. No one can say that Lagos State is not working. It is working because the public servants are working round the clock to make it work and it does not follow that a Managing Director in a company is better intellectually than a Director or Permanent Secretary or Clerk in the Public Service.
What do you think should be done to make public servants perform creditably well?
That is a billion Naira question. It is an irrefragable fact “That man does not live by bread alone, but man cannot also live without bread”. The issue of money or living wages are key to public servants. The salaries of civil servants are abysmally and incredibly meagre. In fact, you want to ask yourself how they are surviving. Their salaries have remained stagnant for years, yet nothing was done to review these upward. The salaries of a Permanent Secretary is what a fresh graduate will earn in an oil or petroleum related organizations. The pension of a Permanent Secretary who have spent about 30-35 years in service cannot be more than N15 million and because of the extant Pension Law, may be his or her gratuity will be hovering be between N3.5 million to N4 million, while he or she will be earning about N100,000 to N120,000 monthly. What do you think a Permanent Secretary who had spent the best part of his productive life can do with gratuity of N3 million and monthly payment of N120,000? What does that kind of system encourage? Corruption. Haven’t you seen what becomes of Permanent Secretaries and indeed public servants for years after retirement? It is sad and uninspiring and can motivate people to steal in order to safeguard their post retirement lives. People, who say civil servants are the richest in Nigeria are being mischievous. What fraction of the public servants constitute the lucky ones. My friends, the issue of condition of public servants will be for another day. Before now, civil servants enjoy job security that is no longer in existence. A governor can just decide one day even on only flimsy offence instruct the HoS to do away with your service. Without stealing, your appointment will just come to an abrupt end. What could Christ do to Pontius Pilate? You will just accept your fate. Like I said earlier it’s a long issue, but to make them happy, review their salaries upward and facilitate the process, house ownership through mortgage. Public servants are in penury. Politicians toss them up and down and victimize them where they appear not to be on the same page. Finally everybody knows that government is the highest employer of labour and if about 65 per cent of the workforce in Nigeria are susceptible to corruption, how then can our struggle to bring corruption to its lowest ebb possible? The Federal and State Government must do something if their fight against corruption is to succeed?
Some people are also advocating that the workforce in the Public Service is too large, what is your view on their advocacy?
It is the responsibility of government to provide jobs for its citizens.
What were the challenges you confronted as the Clerk of LAHA?
You see, being the Clerk of the LAHA was like being the HoS on its own because there are three arms of government: the legislature, judiciary and executive. The legislature is an arm of government on its own, and people have not really understood that. They are still thinking that the legislature is an appendage of the executive. A Clerk of the House is the head of bureaucracy of that arm of government and it should be seen as such. One of the problems that most Clerks encounter is the inability of some governors to appreciate the fact that legislature is not an appendage of the executive, it is a different arm of government and should be given the free hand to carry out its responsibilities without interference. I must give kudos to the governors of Lagos State from the time of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu for signing the law that gave autonomy to LAHA, which became operational sometime in 2011. Lagos State is the pride of all legislators in Nigeria. Some Speakers are also overbearing and incorrigible thinking that they know it all without seeking the expert and professional advice of their Clerks. The resultant effect of this is that they end up being in trouble or making ridicule their exalted office.
I can tell you that all the governors of Lagos State have contributed immensely to what LAHA is today. Both within and outside Nigeria, the Lagos State House of Assembly is seen as the cynosure of other House of Assemblies in terms of exposure and training. Having said that, I cannot say it is a bed of roses all the time. Working with politicians is not a tea party, it is very difficult because all of them have their different objectives and goals. For instance, when we have 40 legislators in Lagos State, you have to manage them with their individual idiosyncrasies, it is not a small thing and it becomes different when they are from different political parties –you really have to manage them so that none of them will feel that you are being partial in the discharge of your duties. We are very lucky in Lagos State when you look at the quality of legislators we have in terms of commitment and dedication. I must give kudos to the past Speakers of the House, those who really brought about modern legislature in the state from Hon. Olorunibe Mamora to Hon. Adeyemi Ikuforiji. I want to commend Hon. Ikuforiji because he did a lot for LAHA, the respect and honour that LAHA is enjoying today was built by him. He did many things both for the training and retraining of the lawmakers and the staff. Hon. Ikuforiji embarked on massive infrastructural development of the Assembly Complex. The new Chamber and ultra-modern buildings which are the pride of Lagos were his concepts though with the support of his progressive colleagues. Luckily, the current Speaker Hon. Mudashiru Obasa is also pulling his weight, he has been in the House for almost 16 years and he is an experienced legislator, he has also brought a lot of innovations to the workings in the House of Assembly. Most of the laws that have been enacted by LAHA have been impactful on the people. The staff of the Assembly as far as I’m concerned are the best in the entire Public Service of Lagos State.
Do you think that bureaucracy delays development in any country?
That is a misconception about bureaucracy itself. Any organization that has more than 10 or 20 people in his employ will definitely bring bureaucratic system in the management and running of the organization. In public service, you are dealing with government money and dealing with people’s lives. Whatever decision you take or you may want to take will take time because you must not rush to take decisions considering how it will impact on the people. What does bureaucracy mean?
Bureaucracy in a simplest form can be defined as a system of administration bond by rules and regulations. Bureaucracy is a process and because of the complexity of system of government there is no other better system to be evolved than bureaucracy. It would be an error of judgement to conclude that bureaucracy is slow, rather, it ensures that before any decision is taken, minor or major, serious or cogitations and analysis would have been done to ensure that once a decision is made, that decision can stand the test of time and will be in the overall interest of not only the state but the people themselves. A wrong decision which failed to go through the process could be cataclysm and disastrous. Yes, people could make it slow if they want to be dubious opportunistic. As far as I’m concerned, bureaucracy is not the problem but its operators. In Lagos State for example. A file will not stay more than a day on your table without any justifiable reason and that is bureaucracy in action. In taking a decision in government, you must be conscious of principle of precedence. Public Service is cornucopia of several professions and this put it in a better stead to advise government and political officers rightly.
Some schools of Thought are of the view that because of the dwindling economic fortunes of the country, our legislators should go part time, what is your take?
It is true that our economy is facing serious challenges. With concerted and patriotic efforts on the part of everybody, Nigeria will quickly swim out of the recession. Many people have asked me this question at several fora and I am going to tell you what I told them. Nigerians are very unfair to the legislative arm. Most of their condemnations and vituperations are borne out of malice or jaundiced understanding of the legislature. First and foremost, Nigeria should cease seeing the legislative arm as a department of the executive, but an arm of government just as the executive is. The Executive cannot claim superiority over the legislature, neither can the latter do likewise. The three arms are independent but are dependent on each other for the effective running of government. The moment the people begin to see legislature as the third arm of government (Legislature, Executive and judiciary) they will then have a rethink about their views of the legislators. Having said that the issue of part time is a constitutional matter and it has to go through the process of constitution amendment. Let me also quickly add that people are deriding the legislature on the grounds that there is too much money available to them to spend, but the question is the percentage of the money budgeted for the third arm of government out of the total budget of the nation? The quality of all the members cannot be measured by the excesses of very insignificant few who have continued to be objects of ridicule in the political landscape of this country. The scantiness of the Chambers does not mean that members had jettisoned their statutory responsibilities, those that were not in Chamber for plenary are probably at Committee meetings or on oversight visitations which of course are arguably important and indeed integral functions of the legislature. I would however advise all legislative houses in the country to adopt the Lagos State style which is that no Committee meeting or oversight visitation should be done during plenary session. It means that plenary session takes precedence over all other legislative responsibilities.
On the issue of part time, I would have wholeheartedly supported it but we cannot do it now based on the fact that our democracy is still wobbling. Yes, some countries run their legislature on part time basis, these countries’ democracy has blossomed. On full time, they are yet to grasp the rules of the game. If you now put them on part time, they would be distracted and nothing meaningful will come out of them. Don’t forget, of all the three arms of government, the most disadvantaged is the legislative. Ever since we have been having military interregnum, both the executive and judiciary continued to operate while the legislature was suspended thereby slowing down the level of understanding of our legislators nationwide.
In conclusion, I will still support legislature to be on full time. We are truly under civil rule but not practicing democracy. In another ten years’ time, I hope we would have been reasonable to know that part time will save both the state and Federal Government enormous amount of money which could be used for other developmental purposes. The legislature has to fight for its right. Just as Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu used to say power is not served a lar carte. Fight for your right and embark on massive public enlightenment about the work of the legislature.
How is life outside service? What are you doing now?
Well, I thank God for His blessings, I’m over 60 years of age. Just like Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo said, God has also been partial to me, He has been kind to me, out of several thousands of people, I was singled out to be the Clerk of LAHA and that was a unique privilege which forever I will be grateful to God.
I will not say I was the best person in the service nor will I say I was the most handsome person in the service before I was appointed. I was also not the most knowledgeable person, but it was in the wisdom of God and the people that I was appointed.
Life after service is not all that easy for public servants. Like I said earlier, the salary we earn is too meagre. It will amaze you that a level 16 officer has not even laid the foundation of a house. Will he now be using his monthly stipends to start build it, when he has other things to do? Let me shock you, some people retired as Permanent Secretary, but when you see them after two years, you won’t believe that they once held such a position. Even the same thing happens to some Directors as well.
Some of us can be said to be lucky in the sense that probably out of family inheritance, we could venture into some other things but it is not easy. If you do any business that has to do with electricity you are in problem. That is why I pay more interest in real estate business. What I do basically is to help my clients do researches if they want to acquire land to ensure that the land is safe and also help them buy after certifying that the land is safe.
