Post-independence African states have been confronted with different challenges particular, with service delivery related issues, this problem has been identified as a carryover vestige from colonial experience: as public service delivery were purely viewed by indigenous African people as service to and for the benefit of the colonial imperialists. However, despite several plans and massive injections of international and domestic resources to improve service delivery system, public service delivery is still failing in many developing countries (Leni et al., 2012). This suggests that, there is an urgent need to revisit  approaches   toward   improving   service  delivery system. Thus, efficient and fair socio-economic and political service delivery is pertinent to fostering development and democratic consolidation; it is also a panacea to legitimize governmental power, encourage active involvement of people in government programmes, and reduce public discontents/protest against government and its institutions. Instructively, it must be noted that the essentiality of service delivery covers but not exclusively, delivering of democratic dividends, health care provision, education, infrastructural development, provision of social amenities, security, among others. However, as rightly observed     by    Nnamani    and    Chilaka    (2012),   the government mechanism for successful implementation of these programmes is not adequate in post-independence Nigeria. Given the underdeveloped nature of most African states, thus, the existence of robust SSpublic services particularly, in Nigeria has been identified as an important strategy in formulating and implementing public policies by the government: it does this by  translating  the  plans  and  programmes  of  government  into  concrete  public  goods  and  services  for  the  use  of  the  citizenry. Arguably, it is very pertinent for government to promote active, accountable, transparent and responsive service delivery system that would boost the peoples’ confidence in the government and its institutions, therefore, garner peoples support for developmental programmes and reduce tendency for nepotism, patron-clientelism, corruption, bad governance, poor productivity and other anti-development pathologies.

Notably, the future and development of a nation is sine-qua-non to the capability of its public administration to provide and reinvent scientifically and philosophically of management that is capable of rendering socio-economic needs in the developing countries (Bonnie and Kehinde, 2007), such national development is also a sine qua non to the survival of robust public service delivery system in the public administration. In this regard, Pollitt argues that, post-bureaucratic organizational innovations can also help to minimize challenges confronting public sector. In essence, to improve the living standards of the people within a given political system, administration of public work must engage the application of rules which involves the administering of legal procedures to transformed administrative decisions into concrete actions (Agagu, 1997)

Given the nature and peripheral status of developing countries, much of the public service delivery is primarily the concern of bureaucracy which is heavily saddled with administration and management of public services and goods. Therefore, efforts in making bureaucracy effective, productive, accountable, transparent and responsive are ingredients to foster socio-economic and political development particularly, in a democratic system. However, the failure of public institutions to foster service delivery given the reality of globalization pressure and unprecedented increase in public demands and expectations for social, economic, political and technological developmental needs has become apparent particularly in a developing country like Nigeria. This situation thus, posed serious challenges to the ability of the public service to properly direct its aspirations towards improving the general welfare of the citizens (Oyedele, 2015). Suffice to say is that, in an ideal democratic system, the justification for the existence of any government is based on its ability to meet the basic needs of its citizens in a more prompt, effective and affordable ways. Doing so indeed, would automatically boost the chances for democratic sustainability and reduce the cost of combating public protest/civil unrest and   rehabilitation   of   destroyed   social   and   physical government installations caused by poor service delivery.

This paper therefore, is divided into five sections: introduction, conceptual clarification, impediments to service delivery in Nigeria, service delivery and its implications for development and democratic consolidation, conclusion and suggestions on how to adequately manage and reinvent public administration that is service oriented in Nigeria.     

The theory of bureaucracy was employed and qualitative research method was utilized. Using historical antecedents, the study investigated mode of service delivery within public administration in Nigeria with the intention to examine the implications of poor service delivery for good governance and general developmental programmes in the post-independence Nigeria.

The data utilized for this study were basically sourced from secondary method of data collection such as: reports of several constituted committees on civil service and public administration reforms in Nigeria, extant literature, media reports on the subject matter and internet resources. The data collected were contently analyzed based on the nature and practical experience of how bureaucracy function in Nigeria and how bureaucracy ought to be functioning to meet the challenges of the 21^st century and enhance good governance in Nigeria.

Conceptual clarification

Development

Development as a concept is very complex in nature: it means different things to different people and countries. Indeed, what some developing countries in Africa would regards as development features for instance, in the area of information communication system, might have become obsolete in some of the highly developed countries in Europe and America. In the view of Kabuya (2011), the term development is basically a process of improving people’s lives. Similarly, development has also been conceived by some scholars as the changes in living standards, quality of life, prevalence women’s status, and a change of people’s attitude to work. Meanwhile, development has been described in different ways: economic growth, increase in per-capital income, democratic consolidation, good governance, equality, poverty eradication, existence of freedom, technological advancement and holistic change in societal values among others. In contemporary world system, development has been closely link with good governance: because good governance is an instrument for achieving better policymaking and improved economic outcomes (Obama (2009); Rodrik (2008) cited in Kabuya, 2011).

However, Myrdal (1968) and Seers (1979) argued that economic growth should not be the determinant of developmental status of any country. For instance, Myrdal argues that developmental concept entails modernization model which requires holistic change of the whole society. Similarly, Seers also  developed  three to describe development as a concept, these includes reduction in income inequality, reduction of poverty and malnutrition, and creation of employment opportunities.

According to Evans (1989), the nature of country bureaucratic settings, dominant societal values and interests and prevailing organizations within the state to a greater extent usually determine the outcomes of developmental programmes within a given country. He further stressed that, we can also talk of development when the bureaucracy cannot be unilaterally influenced by powerful individuals within or outside the country without losing close interaction with prevailing interests within the society to be  able to negotiate and seek needed assistance necessary for transformation process¹⁵.

According to Leftwich (2000), the dominant variable is politics and it shapes the concept developmental failure or success and the whole concept of developmental state in every human communities.

In Leftwich opinion, the structures of developmental states as well as their impressive performance have been largely shaped by politics in terms of context, dynamics and purpose (Leftwich, 2000). 

As argued by Chang (1999), a state is developed to the extent that it is able to prosecute programmes that focus on institutional building to broaden development; pursue investment plan coordination; and be instrumental in conflict prevention and resolution as a result of actions and reactions to the development trajectory among the contending groups within the state. Essentially, a developed state must be capable of visionary and channel pathway to accomplished its vision (Chang, 2003a).

Service delivery

The World Development Report of 2004 closely link service delivery with accountability and concludes that service delivery failed in many developing countries as a result of the failures in accountability relationships (World Bank, 2004). Service delivery has also been defined as part of enterprise that describes the relationship between clients and providers of goods and services: in such a situation the client could either gain or loss values in services offered by the provider, be it on information or other task.

More importantly, “Service delivery” has become a buzz word, commonly use to describe particularly, basic services providing by the government such as social amenities like hospital, road, electricity, water supply, market place, customs services, licensing, sanitary services, physical infrastructure, town planning, housing among others. However, government’s capacity in delivering most of the aforementioned services is questionable and unimpressive. Thus, more often than none, in response by the citizens, the number of “service delivery protests,” or protests in quest for better service delivery, has become more popular, particularly in Nigeria, as more people have staged public protest in response to poor power supply, ill-services in health care sector and unnecessary charges for services not rendered or unsolicited services by communication service providers, inhuman nature of policing system in Nigeria among other poor service attitudes. Therefore, the term “service delivery protest” has become a common phrase loosely used by the media to define various types of protests in Nigeria.

In the relationship between government institutions and the citizens, service delivery is very central, because it could either boost or marred the confidence of the citizens in the government and its institutions. The recognition that citizens symbolized customers to their government over the past ten years has continued to influence the way governments think and act in relation to its citizens. This realization portends a good sign of responsiveness on the part of government, particularly in developed democracies. The realization is based on the assumption that every customer have right to request quality services that suit their timely needs at modest cost from their service providers and all packaged in friendly manner. This is applicable to the scenarios between citizens and the government: in this regard government is seen as service provider key public services (Jean, 2007).

It is instructive to note that, the existence of any government is presumed on its ability to fulfill the basic necessity of lives of its citizens. Put differently, the existence of government is justifiable on the basis that it supplies crucial services such as security of lives and properties, maintaining orderliness, providing social amenities and infrastructure, and offer legal framework for conflicts prevention and resolution and acceptable system of justice. The conventional wisdom deduced here is that, the government fulfillment of its own part of social contract agreement with its citizen will automatically confer legitimacy on government, its activities and strengthen its institutions. 

Post-independence

Post-independence occasionally is applied temporally, to denote the immediate time after colonialism. In most literatures, the 1960s was generally regarded as the decade of African independence or liberation. During the post-independence period, most African countries (colonies) matured into nationhood’s political independence which symbolized for colonized people, a means of controlling their own resources and benefits that had previously be enjoyed by their erstwhile colonizers or the ex-metropolitans.  

The fourth republic and the syndrome of public service delivery

In developed societies of the  world,  the  recognition  that citizens represents customers in their relationship with government which stands as service provider has continued to influence governments actions and reactions to public service delivery. Thus, in most of the advance countries, the relationship between citizens and the government is guided by customers/service-providers principles, such that, great efforts are channeled at satisfying the citizens that are usually regarded as customers. In essence, the government which is regarded as service provider recognized that customers (citizens) have their right to push for better services from their providers that will meet their compelling needs in a quicker and easily accessible ways, the quality of services must be standards and at modest cost, and all packaged in friendly manner.

However, since the return of democracy in May 1999, the bureaucratic situation in Nigeria in terms of delivery peoples oriented services, attitudes to work, operational modality and accountability level were all unimpressive and at dismal. In the same vein, public services were in bad shapes and the available civil servants were deficient and not adequately equipped for democratic service demands due to prolong military rule in Nigeria. Some observers of Nigerian public administration also noted that during this period, the bureaucracy which was expected to champion the course of democratic consolidation and good governance was very ineffective in policy implementation, corrupt, not professional, and organized in centrifugal and ethnocentric way.

In addressing the challenges confronting public sector in most developing countries, a cursory note must be taken, according to Perrow (1972), the complexity nature public sector in terms of multiple function status and the need to maintain equilibrium on contradictory interests and ensure consideration. This particular attributes of public sector organizations must be given a due recognition when reforming bureaucratic apparatus, rather total condemnation of public sector as embodiment pathologies that must be discarded. Public sectors organizations must adopt a trade-offs mechanism when necessary, rather than reliance on a cure-all strategy. Perrow’s argument was further buttressed by Pollitt and Bouckaert (2011), that any reforms on administrative or bureaucratic system is always distinguished by trade-offs dilemmas, paradox and intrinsic constraints (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011).

Former President, Olusegun Obasanjo summarizes all the problems facing delivery of public service in Nigeria during June 1993 members of the Nigeria Federal Cabinet and Permanent Secretaries retreat as follows:

Obasanjo stressed that pursuance of government contracts have become the priority of public officers. Unfortunately, Nigerians have always been at receiving end of poor quality of public service delivery: in most cases without payment of bribe processing files do not move and when it is moved it easily get lost in transit. The public officers have demonstrated high level of inefficiency and corruption to the detriment of prompt and efficient implementation of governmental policies in Nigeria…(Obasanjo, 2007).

The foregoing lamentation of the former President Obasanjo revealed the poor attitudes to service delivery in Nigeria which posed as big obstacles to implementation of developmental programmes and good governance at large. Part of the government efforts to reposition bureaucracy and public services in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic was the Public Service Reform pursued by Obasanjo administration. The major thrusts of that reform were discussed below:

1. They emphasized the need to professionalize public service through skills acquisition and engagement of technocrats to support government in its operation and policy implementation;

2. To minimize financial burden usually caused by wasteful spending and maladministration through monetization policy and incentive scheme that will encourage private public partnership for effective government and active service operation;

3. Motivating bureaucrats through responsive and accountable contributory pension system scheme that ensure prompt payment of pension of retired bureaucrats as at when due;

4. Rightsizing the civil service to attract qualified people to join the government workforce and discourage none qualified candidates through effective screening method;

5. To modify funding and budgeting for various government programmes through budgetary and fiscal reforms that involves a framework for Medium-Term Public Expenditure;

6. To guide against replication and encourage performance evaluation and systematic reporting, there is urgent need to integrate organizational structures;

7. Redirecting the attention of various agencies of government to their core values and functions to which they were established in order to encourage effectiveness through restructuring and retraining and discourage engagement in commercial activities;

8. To ensure bureaucrat adapts easily to the current operational and a technological reality of information communication technology, there is need to reinforce work processes, procedure and administrative rules;

9. Changing the mind-set of public officers are required to exhibit courtesy, discipline and be guided by code of conduct of their respective professions among others (Famosaya, 2013).

Given the foregoing explications, administrative and civil service reforms becomes necessary in order to engender channel a new pathway for rebirth of public services and create new vision to address the challenges of democracy and good governance. Otherwise, pathological contradiction within Nigerian public service is sufficient enough to prevent any meaningful efforts at consolidating Nigeria nascent democracy. Ideally, government institutions are designed to nourish and strengthen societal values and democratic principles…(Bonnie and Kehinde, 2007); however, despite government’s efforts to create the Offices of the Public Defender, the government and its representatives are troubled by the political will to democratize the government institutions.

Unfortunately, there is persistent dwindling in the level of trust network between the people and the government on public service performance in providing quality and modest cost services to the citizens in developing countries like Nigeria: it was generally observed that politicians and bureaucrats often demonstrate preference for money making through corruption than proving necessary and required services demanded by their citizens. According to Anwar (2005), the public confidence in public sectors performance in developing countries has further deteriorated through the 21^st century global information revolution: the citizens are empower to access, transmit, and transform information through information revolution which makes it difficult for governments to block such access, and more difficulty for government to exercise authoritative controls usually enjoyed by most governments in the developing world. Similarly, the global information revolution also hinders government capacity to block information from citizens. The emergence of internet facilities, sophisticated phones, information-satellite TV and fax encourage citizens’ consciousness about expected obligations, rights entitlement, and alternative options and reinforce citizens’ demands for accountable public sector Anwar (2005).

The inadequacies of successive governments in the post-independence Nigeria has reflected in the lack of peoples’ oriented policies cynically embarked upon by both politicians and top bureaucrats such as; the increase in the price of fuel, removal of subsidy on consumable goods and services, controversial privatization of some key public organizations, petrol, and incessant devaluation of local currency among other. Similarly, consolidation of democracy and good governance has not been adequately supported by the public servants due to wide spread of bureaucratic corruption. For instance, the government offices particularly at the federal level were indicted of gross corruption by the Nigeria Federal House of Representative Committee on public account (Vanguard, 2004), in fact, recently (as garnered from dailies in July, 2015) the former head of Federal Civil Service, Stephen Oronsaye was arraigned in the Federal High Court, Abuja by the EFCC on corruption charges. Similarly, in recent time, several top bureaucrats and politicians like the former Group Managing Director of Nigeria National Petroleum Commission Mr. Andrew Yakuku, former Petroleum Minister Allinson Madueke  were respectively charged for corruption and embezzlement of 9.7 million dollars and 20.3 billion dollars, respectively. The foregoing challenges of public service in Nigeria are contributive factors to developmental failure and efforts in strengthen democracy in Nigeria.

Moreover, the degree and quality of workforce available to deliver public services in Nigeria is inadequate and not sophisticated enough to tackle the new public demands and challenges posed by the 21^st century administrative and technological system. The implication of this is that, in several occasions, government’s programmes and services are not done with the intention to satisfy the real needs of the people, rather some of those services and projects are usually motivated by primordial and rent-seeking interests. Unsurprisingly, the former President Obasanjo himself painted a gory picture of the public service in Nigeria when selected set of civil servants were asked to justified the continue payment of the ministry of works overstaffed with 23,000 workers, when most of the jobs are executed by consultants? In same vein, sensitive civil service positions have also been staffed with contract workers majority which lack the required civil service procedures, the negative implication of this has manifested policy crises and service delivery failure.

Challenges of service delivery in post-independence Nigeria

The manifestation of service delivery in Nigeria is quite moribund. This is so, because the culture of effective and efficient public service delivery has not been fully entrenched as expected since Nigeria gained her independence in 1960, as government works is widely regarded as no man’s work and as Yoruba popular adage succinctly put it “a ki se ise ijoba ki alaagun” meaning “you cannot sweat when working for government”. This embedded problem is premise on some basic factors that have hindered and still hindering effective service delivery in Nigerian public administration. Firstly, the poor attitude of public servants towards effective and efficient service delivery is worrisome. Not surprisingly, the career progression in public service in most cases is not tie to workers’ performance and merit; rather other personal considerations are given more priority. Similarly, organizational survival of public institutions is not leveraged on consumer assessment and satisfaction with the services rendered, instead public institutions survival is determine by act of patron-client relations and other primordial sentiments.

Consequently, lack of professionalism in governance and public administration is peculiar to the problems encountered by many countries in the 21st century, particularly the developing economies and democracies (Famosaya, 2013). These problems involves globalization pressure, competing demand for services that require high professionalism and  the skilled   distribution, environmental changes as a result of ozone depletion and the negative consequences that follows such as incessant occurrence of natural disaster, oil spillage as a result of oil exploration, internal displacement as a result of natural disasters and gas flaring resulted in poverty and social dislocation, the spread of new types of diseases and epidemics (HIV-AIDS, drug resistance, malaria, strains among others), social conflicts, crimes at magnitude level, and gross levels of unemployment among other challenges. All these point to the need for more competent and effective government intervention through a robust public service delivery system, particularly in the less developed countries. However, in delivering public services, government in developing countries like Nigeria heavily rely on inadequate skilled and non-service oriented personnel for policy implementation. Therefore, the awareness of foregoing challenges underscores the emergence of National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategies (NEEDS): as parts of government efforts to tackle pace of poor service delivery, in order to strengthen necessary service delivery through good governance and improved state institutions.

In addition, the pathology of corruption and its manifestations in all facets of lives in Nigeria political system have also crippled the principle of transparency and accountability in public administration and in turn posed as a serious threat to the culture of good and effective service delivery in Nigeria. It is on the basis of the foregoing articulation that this paper concerns itself with how this yoke of poor service delivery in post-independence Nigeria system could be broken, in order to pave ways for possible reversal for virile policy making, robust service delivery system and policy implementation geared towards stable democratic governance and consolidation in Nigeria.

The implications of service delivery for development and good governance in Nigeria

The public sectors in Nigeria has a long history of woeful service delivery performance, particularly in notable areas of popular demands for public services like electricity supply, water supply, telecommunication, postal services, medical services, education, environment, transportation and petrochemical among others. The persistence failure of public administration to meet the people’s demands in terms of provision of quality goods and services has manifested in four major ways; level of satisfaction, trust, reliability and legitimacy. According to Jean Eigeman (2007), the level of citizen satisfaction in service delivered by the government is a critical factor in the determining government acceptance; the key element that shape the relationship between elected representatives and voters is trust and it confer legitimacy on the activities of the  representatives  as  viable  part  of the political system. If one desires a solid basis for making and enforcing rules for citizens and society, trust is essential; reliability, perception of the existence of good governance boost citizens confidence on reliability of their government. Therefore, for government to be considered reliable, it must strive to achieve good governance; Lastly, legitimacy, connote confidence, trust and satisfaction of customer satisfaction intertwine (Jean, 2007). Thus, public service delivery constitutes a key factor to evaluate government’s legitimacy based on its performance and overall government image assessment. In essence, delivery of quality and effective services symbolized fundamental basis on which good governance is anchored for overall developmental aspiration of any country.

Consequently, the analysis has resulted in calls for deepening democracy through direct participation of citizen in government and introduction of privatization policy. As rightly observed, the poor attitude of workers particularly, in the public sector to issue of service delivery have impacted negatively on customers’ satisfaction and on political and economic development of the society at large (Aremu and Babarinde, 2010). Similarly, the Nigerian civil service has often come under heavy criticism for poor organization, poor planning, over-staffing, indiscipline, red tape and secrecy, insensitivity, rigidity and over centralization, apathy, incompetence, corruption and favouritism, high-handedness, laziness, truancy and malingering (Adamolekun, 1986). In the same vein, the political Bureau set up by the government in 1986 observed that goals and aspirations of the public service were not properly directed towards improving the general welfare of Nigerians and it had rather mainly served the interest of the bureaucrats and those of capital accumulation of private, local and foreign companies (Political Bureau Report, 1987).

Given the importance of public service delivery to the democratic consolidation and citizenry wellness in ideal political system, the need for effective and quality service delivery to meet the competing demands of citizens cannot be over emphasized. This is why public services should also be accessible, affordable and be effectively delivered to the consumers. Therefore, the government is saddled with the responsibility to deliver basic social amenities to the general public in a more effective ways. However, the working culture varies from society to society and from organization to organization and this variation as pointed out by DeSimone and Harris are due to internal factors such as motivation, ability, attitude, knowledge and skills. In order to  effectively  address  the negative change in the culture of service delivery among workers in Nigerian civil service, it has become  imperative for  governments to adopt strategies that  will enhance customer relation and increase citizen  participation in decision making; on  how  public  services  are provided (DeSimione and Harris, 1998). This is why the   pressure   toward   greater   citizen   involvement   in decision making and participation in government has  compelled developing countries everywhere to seek  increase in the quality of government  services  at  a  time  when the available resources for delivering services have declined (Oyedele, 2015).

The conventional wisdom deduced here is that, before the challenges posed by poor service delivery to development and democratic consolidation in post-independence Nigeria can be tackled, the new paths toward achieving this must be redesign as against the old strategies of addressing the subsisting problems over the years. Meanwhile, several years back remuneration in the form of salary increment has been used as a way of motivating public servants to deliver quality service to the citizenry but this strategy has not yielded much of desired result in term of quality service delivered. Rather, it has resulted in further lamentation on poor condition of work and continuous agitation for pay rise by the workers. Although, this is not an attempt to jettison the importance of good remuneration as a motivating factor for efficient and effective service delivery, in fact, good remuneration system must be sustained for public servants given the economic reality in Nigeria. However, the fact still remains to address decadence in Nigeria public administration particularly, in the area of service delivery. 

This paper strongly maintains that, poor service delivery has continued to hinder development and good governance in post-independence Nigeria. This has manifested in poor negative attitude towards effective services, low quality of public service workforce, patron-client value system in Nigerian public sectors, wide spread of corruption across all level of bureaucratic system in Nigeria and preference for politicking the detriment of bureaucratic values and professional ethics. Therefore, for Nigeria to attain its desire level of development and better the lives of its teeming population, service delivery system must be rethink and redirected towards fairness, equitability, rule of law, responsiveness, accountability, wealth redistribution and profit maximization must be regulated and justifiable. Otherwise, the quest for development might remain elusive and corruption, nepotism, poor productivity, bad governance and patron-clientelism among other pathologies that bedeviled post-independence Nigeria will remain wide-spread and pervasive. 

1. The solution must begin from the leadership perspective. Thus, the leadership in all spheres of Nigerian polity must be reoriented towards quality service delivery to the citizenry: such leaders must be able to suppress personal interests  to  favour  national  interests while carrying out their official responsibilities.

2. There must be systemic re-orientation of civil society groups, media, developmental organizations and agencies: the National Orientation Agency could be instrumental in this respect to spread the information on the need for integration of accountability as the core aspect of service delivery in public institutions.

3. The principles of equity, fairness, justice and supremacy of rule of law among workers, between workers and management must be fully entrenched: equal workers must be treated equally and there should be justice between unequal workers in a bureaucratic system in order to ensure motivation and discourage unfair treatment.

4. In the same vein, decision making within public administration should mirror democratic principle, in order to pave ways for innovative, creativity and a sense of belonging for workers. This is further buttress by Marx in his theory of social production that, whenever the production relationship is that of master-subordinate, with master exploiting the subordinates, the outcome in such organization is instability and lukewarm attitude to duty (Marx, 1978).

5. Finally, there is no substitute to a professionalism, accountability, responsiveness, technical knowhow, and well-motivated public service in the face of given current waves of globalization pressure that pervaded 21^st century. Therefore, the quest for reinventing democratic good governance is paramount and is sine qua non to reinventing the effective public service delivery for development and general wellbeing of the citizenry.

6. Conclusively, to break the cycle of poor service delivery and developmental failure in Nigeria, new paths must be thread: Leadership must be reoriented towards embracing effective and efficient public services and systemic re-orientation must be thoroughly design to engender the understanding of the essence of a robust public service delivery to the country developmental agenda, good governance and overall wellbeing of the citizenry.

The authors have not declared any conflict of interests.