MANAGING ETHICS AND ACCOUNTABILITY FOR IMPROVED PERFORMANCE IN THE NIGERIAN PUBLIC SERVICE

Abstract

The behavior and practice of public servants all over the world, including Nigeria, are to be governed by the highest moral standard. The core values of these moral standards are loyalty, integrity, probity, honesty, impartiality, service, respect, transparency, accountability, efficiency and effectiveness, diligence, responsiveness, professionalism and political neutrality. Over the years, several efforts made by the country to improve the performance of its public service for national development and to overcome its current economic crisis appear to be fruitless. This is partly due to increasing unethical behavior among public servants. Existing data, survey method and content analysis used in the study have revealed that the factors responsible for unethical behavior among public servants include but not limited to colonial heritage, lack of accountability, scarcity of certain categories of public service, bottlenecks or organizations queuing, faulty placement and promotion of people to leadership position, gross indiscipline, greed and avarice, poverty, appointment of unqualified, incompetent and poorly trained staff. The paper therefore recommends mass education and enlightenment, enforcement of legal instruments, code of conduct and regulations, adoption of merit principle on recruitment, training and promotion and empowerment of appropriate institutions for managing ethics so that the level of performance in the public service can be improved if not raised to a level of excellence.