CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK
In order to close this avenue for the continued perpetration of the evils which we have already noted, and to ensure the same high level of efficiency and performance in all our public services, employees of Boards and Corporations should sit for the same examinations and be subject to the same Public Service Commission as civil servants. Qualifications for eligibility to sit for the competitive examinations should from time to time to be prescribed by the Public Service Commission. But the relevant Organic Law should provide that the eligibility qualifications thus prescribed shall not be lower than the following:
(i) For Administrative Class: a recognised university degree with second-class honours.
(ii) For Executive Class: a recognised university degree or Advanted Level in three subjects or Higher School Certificate; and
(iii) For clerical Class: School Certificate.
(25) As far as possible, provisions should be made in the Constitution concerning the detailed structure of each of the three Organs of the State.
We would like to explain that provisions such as these-are known as Organic Laws and deal among other things,
(i) with the salaries, retiring age, pensions, and other conditions of service of judges and public servants, as well as with the organization of the Courts and the Public Service;
(ii) with the conditions of service of ministers, their appointment, their functions, and the composition of the cabinet; and
(iii) with the composition of the Federal Parliament and State Legislatures, and the manner of electing members there-into.
Matters coming under organic laws may be legislated upon in one of three ways, or they may be classified under various heads and legislated upon in one or other of the three ways. That is to say laws relating to such matters may be
(i) incorporated in the constitution,
(ii) subject to special procedure before passage in the appropriate Legislature, and
(iii) subject to the ordinary procedure for enacting Laws.
It is up to the peoples of Nigeria to make their choice from among these three methods. But we are strongly of the opinion that, whatever we do, we must see to it that provisions relating to the salaries and conditions of service of ministers and judges, the number of ministers which each head of government may appoint having regard to the extent of his responsibilities, and the powers, functions and privileges of the head of state, should be fully embodied in the constitution, in order to take them right out of the rena of the type of villainous, corrupting, and mercenary politics with which the country has been afflicted for upwards of 15 years.
It may be objected that it is rash to provide for the salaries of ministers, judges, and members of the legislatures in the constitution, because in due course of time the cost of living might become very high, and the public functionaries concerned might be hard put to it to make two ends meet on their fixed emoluments.
We do not share this view. If the figures decided upon are reasonably generous, they should attract the right type of public- spirited persons to the service of the country, and keep them there for the next 50 years or more. Ministers of Cabinet rank in Britain, with the exception of the Prime Minister whose salary was doubled in 1938, and again increased recently, have remained static on the same scale of salary for more than 50 years.
(26) A Code of Conduct should be embodied in the Constitution which shall prescribe Rules of Discipline by which Ministers and other specified functionaries, in all the branches of each of the Organs of the State, shall be bound and guided. Appropriate sanctions against any violation ofthe Code should also be provided for in the Constitution.
In most countries ofthe world, particularly in Britain which serves as our model in many things, a Code of Conduct has no force of law.
Ministers and other persons holding positions of public trust are left in their deliberate judgment to observe the rules of discipline laid down in the Code. In other words, it is up to public men to determine when they believe they have offended against any of the rules, and to take swift steps to invoke appropriate conventional sanctions against themselves. British political history is full of instances when ministers and other public men have not hesitated to be their own impartial judges. They had been known to have resigned from office, even when their colleagues had honestly thought that no violation of the code had taken place. That is to say, British public men would rather err on the side of over-rigidity and over-strictness, in the observance of the Code of Conduct, than on the side of lenity.
Here in Nigeria, such a sense of honour as is exhibited by public men in Britain and in most civilised countries is unknown. Public mea will stick to office after they have committed the most heinous breach of public morality. In fact, in the dying months of the First Republic, the brazen and unconcealed commission of acts of depravity and of violent breach of public trust by ministers was regarded as the hallmark of power.
Revolution, if it stems from the just indignation of the people, is a very useful and ‘salutary political instrument. When it is successful, it consumes and cleanses the political Augean stable as nothing else known to man can.
CONTINUES NEXT WEEK