The trials of a Senior Civil Servant
My late father Emmanuel Olajide Olowu (E.O.)، was retired from the Federal Civil Service as a Permanent Secretary by the Buhari Regime in 1984. His contemporaries from the North were not retired. He had started as a Clerk in the Western Region Civil Serice after secondary school. He got a Western Region Scholarship to do the B.Sc Economics at LSE. On return he was moved to the senior civil service، starting as an Assistant Secretary in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning.
My father’s Uncle, was the cause of his challenges in the civil service in the Old West.
This Uncle was making financial demands that were impossible for a civil servant to implement.
He said my father ought to have rented an apartment for him, prior to his teturn to Nigeria from studying in the UK. As at then my father had four children of his own.
To cut a long story short, this Uncle complained to his own contemporaries who were senior to my Dad in the civil service, that my Dad was disrespecting him. This story spread amongst my fathers seniors, particulrly those from the same hometown as this Uncle.
When my father came back from the MPA at Kennedy School of Government, Harvard, USA in 1971, where he had been sent to by the civil service, his cohort had been promoted to Permanent Secretary, but he was not promoted. He was assured that this would be rectified at the next promotion exercise in six months.
Meanwhile, notices were issued for any senior civil servant who wished to transfer from the Western State Civil Serice to join the Federal Civil Service. My father had accepted the assurances about being duely promoted and did not consider the transfer offer. Luckily for my father and I, I would explain the part that affected me in a bit. His very close friend called him and said Jide, if you are not promoted in six months, what would you do? He strongly advised my father to take the transfer offer. So in late 1972, my father joined Federal Civil Service as Deputy Permanent Secretary 2 in the Federal Ministry of Transport. The office was on Joseph Street off Marina.
The official quarters allocated to my Dad was 2 Frosbery Road, Off Boudillon Road in Ikoyi.It was a bungalow with two bedrooms. Compared to the family house my Dad had built in Idiape which had 7 rooms etc, Frosberry was a ‘hut’. However it had a very very large compound. The family relocated from Ibadan to Lagos in phases. Those in boarding house in secondary schools continued in ibadan, those in primary school were transferred to primary schools in ikoyi.
I consider myself to be the biggest beneficiary of this my father’s transfer. It changed me from a Provincial Boy to a Cosmopolitan Boy.
Each day my father brought home all the newspapers in Nigeria and the weekly magazines The Economist, Newsweek and Time. I read all of them voraciously, getting insights into national and global economic and political events.
The Western Civil Service had a directory with official and private phone numbers of senior civil servants. The federal version of it was more elaborate, there were institutions that the State did not have. During the preparation for the return to civil rule starting in 1978, my father brought home a draft of the 1979 constitution, which I also read from cover to cover. These were my primary introduction to how government was structured and how the civil service functioned.
This became very useful when I joined the United Nations Population Fund which provided technical assistance in health to the Nigerian Government. It became more useful when I became an Independent International Heatlh Consultant in 2002. I did consultancies for countries in all parts of Africa including those who spoke Portuguese like Mozambique. My understanding the inter-relationship between the various branches and tiers of government was an asset which facilitated my work.
