Service Charter And The Transformation Of LPS

By Ayo Afuwape

With a view to transforming the public service, a former President of the country, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, introduced SERVICOM (Service Compact) as a tool to enhance the commitment of the Federal Government and all its organs to serving the people better. SERVICOM is a programme meant to improve service delivery throughout the country. It is about service and service delivery; identifying where service fails or is failing with a view to improving service delivery. The Federal Government believes that service can only fail when someone has left undone what should have been done or when someone has done what should not be done.

In his address to the inaugural session of the National Assembly, the former President declared that: “Public offices are the shopping floor for government business.  Regrettably, Nigerians have  for long been feeling short-changed by the quality of public service delivery, by which decisions are not made without undue outside influence and files do not move without being pushed with inducements. Our public offices have too long been show-cases for the combined evils of inefficiency and corruption, whilst being impediments to effective implementation of government policies.  Nigerians deserve better.  And we will ensure they get what is better.”

Whether the public is aware of the establishment of SERVICOM or not, is an issue on one hand, while the question of whether SERVICOM has lived up to its mandates is a more germane issue on the other.

Recently, the Lagos State Government launched its Service Charter, a public document that informs clients about a Ministry, Department or Agency’s services, and outlines citizens’ rights and responsibilities, as well as relevant avenues for communication. It specifies standards of Service Delivery in the form of a series of commitments, entitlements, or promises upon which customers can expect, and demand quality service as a right; and to which they can also complain when service fails. in a nutshell, a Service Charter describes the service experience a customer can expect and contains information about Ministry or Agency Service Delivery approach, and the relationship the customer will have with the Ministry or Agency.

Members of the public had always believed that approaching the Lagos State Government’s seat of power at Alausa, Ikeja,  is a matter of the survival of the fittest. The major notion that preoccupies people’s mind is that you must know a very influential person in government before you could be assured of getting things done. This perception, among other reasons, led to the establishment of service charter in Lagos State as a way of transforming the Lagos public service from an unexciting, monotonous or lukewarm government establishment to a result driven organisation that delivers on government’s social contract with the citizenry. The service charter is set to deliver quality service to the people of Lagos State, ensure good leadership, educate the citizens (customers) on their rights by setting out the entitlement of every citizen and empower public officers to be alert to their responsibilities.

The State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola, at the launch of the initiative in 2012 wondered why, for instance, public schools are not better than private schools and why public hospitals are not better than private hospitals. He equally wondered why government offices are not better than offices in the corporate world despite the fact that government controls the biggest shares of revenues in the country. “If I can buy a bottle of Coke without having to call the Managing Director of Coca Cola, why should I need to call the Governor of Lagos State because I want to buy land? It is because we have not built our government around institutions. And I think we are on our way from today,” Governor Fashola stated. The Governor who also gave an insight into how the journey into the fashioning of the Service Charter started said his administration believes that the public sector has got all it needed to outshine the private sector in terms of quality service delivery.

About fifteen pilot Ministries, Departments and Agencies, (MDAs) were used to test the viability of the initiative at inception but presently, the charter system has started springing up competition among all government agencies with some MDAs which are yet to be incorporated into the scheme already signifying interest and wanting to be captured into the charter net because of its success stories. The Ministry of Health specifically mandated all the General Hospitals and its other components to cue into the initiative, likewise the Ministry of Education.

The driver of the charter campaign in the public service of Lagos State is the Office of Transformation, under the Governor’s Office. The Office under the leadership of Mr. Toba Otusanya, the Director-General, had not only set the board in motion but also hosted journalists in a media forum to evaluate the workings, successes and likely areas of improving the Service Charter initiative since its introduction in 2012. He said that the State Government wasn’t claiming perfection through the introduction of the service charter but rather working to propagate a culture of governance where ‘you do not have to know anybody before you get service’.

Trust is a catalyst of any democratic institution, the absence of this can lead to political instability, such as the one experienced in Nigeria before the 4th republic. Lack of trust can lead to erosion of public confidence, loss of legitimacy of governments. Consequently, distrust or lack of trust, can pose serious challenge to working of governments. It is, therefore important that  members of the public begin to appreciate government’s efforts to restore the age-long mistrust in governance evident in all the pilot MDAs. A visit to the seat of power at Secretariat, Alausa, would surely convince members of the public that there is, indeed, a changing phase.

Members of the public are enjoined to make maximum use of the service charter as a platform to demand for their rights and seek for redress as the case may be. The feedback mechanism should also be used appropriately to enable the service charter champions evaluate the performances of their officers, provide responses to complaints received as well as plan for the future of the initiative.

•Afuwape wrote from  Alausa, Lagos.