Abstract:

Civil service is an executive arm of government that implements the programmes and policies of government efficiently and effectively to enhance national development. Civil servants are crops of technocrat at federal, state and local level who assist government of the day with their wealth of knowledge and experience to carry out their legitimate business. Nigerian civil service has been in dilemma of partisan politics, red-tapism, leakages, wastage, non professionalism, unproductive, redundancy and over-bloated ghost workers from one administration to another since independence of 1960. Civil service revolves around people to achieve result, this prompted why successive regimes have bent on reforming to improve the machinery of government; yet the effort remain obsolescence, no enthusiasm to execute government policies. The paper examines various reforms in Nigeria civil service and finalize that nothing has been done for better service delivery. The lacuna experienced in Nigerian civil service is not far from the structure of Nigerian state coupled with socio-cultural factors on the aegis of federal character principle and quota system all this floored national development. To ameliorate this persistent deterioration of bureaucratic bottleneck, inefficiency and unaccountability, this demands meritocracy in the altar of mediocrity during appointment to enhance national development. The bureaucratic theory of Max Webber should be in place in the context of civil service reform in Nigeria to achieve result. The paper concludes that civil service reform in Nigeria will build human capacity to improve institutional structures and achieve the goal of national development.

Keywords: Civil Service, Reforms, Commission, panels, Red-tapism, service delivery

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