In line with her spirit of reforms, the Managing Director of Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Hadiza Bala Usman, has called on all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of the government to activate the culture of transparency in the conduct of their business and in dealing with members of the public during service delivery.
She said the essence of the series of Presidential Executive Orders rollout by the Acting President is to raise the bar of service delivery and governance which must be anchored on transparency, integrity and efficiency.
In her remarks at the 38th edition of the ‘Leader Without Title,’ tribute and colloquium at the Centre for Values in Leadership (CVL) held in commemoration of the 86th birthday of Nat Okoro and 76th birthday of Chamberlain Oyibo in Lagos, she pointed out that transparency should be at the core of the operations of government parastatals.
The colloquium which came with theme; ‘Have Nigerian parastatals delivered on their promises?’ has several leaders of though in attendance.
According to her, “public servants were responsible to the taxpayers who must be served in a transparent and unbiased manner”.
“Transparency in our activities is very important. We have to put in place standard operation procedures wherever they are required, and make those procedures public so that everybody knows who is responsible for what and how things are supposed to be done,” she stated.
Bala Usman called on public workers to resist chasing letters in government agencies, stressing that such letters were supposed to be responded to by the agencies concerned without the owners coming to persuade people to respond to them.
“Don’t go to offices to follow up on letters because it creates room for rent-seeking and patronage. As heads of agencies, we need to discourage people from roaming around the corridors of an organisation saying they want to follow up on letters. Our job as public servants is to respond to those letters in a timely manner.
“I think heads of agencies should step out of their offices and go right to where they are implementing their programmes to see how they are done. We need to walk away from our bubbles as chief executive officers and go there and see how the foot soldiers are implementing the projects. This is important because if you sit on the sixth floor of your office, you are not going to know what is happening. By going there to see what they are doing, you are setting an example as a leader.
“Being a chief executive does not isolate you from your primary mandate. No matter what you instruct, if the person right there is not actualising it you have failed,” NPA boss averred.
