By Ezekiel Nabieu
Whoever is the author of the idea of setting up examinations for senior Assistant Secretaries in the Civil Service must be an original thinker. This requirement should not just be limited to administrators but also to professionals in the public service as well. These should go along with refresher courses that seem to be dying out. Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared but this does not argue that people should not be tested. How else can one tell that a person has benefited from any learning process if not by any questions that are virtually examinations?
The examinations idea could have arisen from the disappointing standards of those from whom much is expected. And this in turn arises from the antecedent cause of low quality of recruits churned out from universities these days not excluding some universities abroad. These are obviously reflected in poor service delivery.
The fact is well known that in our society for most of our university graduates who are not involved in teaching and even some lecturers their graduation ceremonies mark the end of their formal education. They are too tired. They could be spotted in public places notably pubs spinning lots of braggadios around. With the stanchless passage of time even the smattering education they have ebbs away. Francis Bacon in his Essays stated: “reading maketh a full man, conference a ready and writing an exact man.”
Though they are aware that their studies are in faculties they care little for more progress since they have secured their respective jobs.
It should be interesting to know about the syllabus for such an examination and the kind of questions that are likely to be drawn. And it is worthy of note that the examinees are expected to have gone through the civil service training college. It can also be safely assumed that the syllabus would contain knowledge of general and financial orders that have in most instances been replaced by Orders from Above. While the bureaucracy cannot be entirely delinked from politics it is expedient that there should be a line between the two entities however thin. This is because the civil service is the repository of continuity.
How can we be sure that examination malpractices that bud at secondary school level will be replicated at Senior Assistant Secretary level? They would have been connoisseurs by now in the art of graft.
In all this experience cannot be set aside. It has been the main yardstick by which people advance in almost in all spheres of life. Practical involvement in an activity ought to be of advantage to an individual. But it is not only ones involvement but ones capacity for benefitting from it. This is the basis on which workers are usually promoted in almost all walks of life.
With our present official syndrome for corruption it is not unthinkable that the ulterior motive of introducing an examination at this stage is to weed out opposition party personnel from the civil society. Is this a way of enhancing the much touted performance contract?
(C) Politico 09/03/16
