Human Resources Management and Service Delivery in Nigeria

Abstract

The performance of most public organizations in rendering effective service to the public has remained epileptic for decades despite huge investments on them and past government reforms. Efforts in transforming the civil service and other governmental institutions for effective and efficient performance have no doubt in recent times become one of the most pressing and fundamental preoccupations of government as the ongoing administrative, economic and social reforms by the Obasanjo's administration depicts. The paper represents essentially an attempt to analyse and comprehend the role of Human Resource Management (HRM) in effective service delivery in Nigeria. The paper advocates that the revamping and transformation of the Nigerian Civil Service to render effective service to the public lies not in the continuous formulation of reforms measures which are hypocritically implemented but in effective Human Resource Management, total and complete change in our attitudes, value system and the rebirth of a new political order characterized by foresighted leadership and devoid of “The politics of chop-chop and stomachocracy”. Improving service delivery in an environment of inefficiency is exercise in futility.

SOPHIA: An African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 8 (2) 2006: pp. 7-13