ABSTRACT
At
independence in 1960, Britain bequeathed to Nigeria its own system of
governance. The system is run on the
active participation of the civil servants in daily administration. In the
current democratic dispensation civil servants have become very important in
the process of assessing the performance of the government. They are vital in assisting government in
policy formulation and are also critical in the eventual execution of such
policy decisions. To perform optimally
therefore, civil servants should be of their best by having positive attitude
to work to ensure effective service delivery.
The study therefore investigates the attitude to work of civil servants
in Lagos state vis-à-vis the effectiveness of their service delivery.
The
study adopted the descriptive and explanatory survey design. The population of
study was all the 25 Ministries and 86 Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in the
state. Both stratified and purposive
sampling techniques were adopted in selecting the seven MDAs that formed the
sample of the study being those whose service delivery can easily be physically
identified. The research instrument was
a validated questionnaire. A total of
379 copies of the instrument were administered with 93% response rate. The data collected were analysed using
frequency Table and percentages while the formulated hypotheses were tested
using correlation analysis with the aid of SPSS.
The
study found a relationship between the attitude to work and the effectiveness
of service delivery of the civil servants.
It found that their attitude to work also bore a relationship to their
job satisfaction. The analysis revealed
that job satisfaction on the part of these civil servants had effect on their
service delivery. It was also found out
that these civil servants were committed to their respective
employer-organisations. Finally, it
found that their organizational commitment had a significant effect on their
service delivery.
The
study concluded that considering their unique role in assisting government to
deliver quality service to its citizens, these employees should be adequately
motivated to cultivate positive attitude to work. It therefore recommended the creation of an
enabling working environment, a well-defined and motivating staff welfare and
compensation package for them. It also recommended that staff training and
re-training should be emphasized by the state government with a view to
inculcating the requisite positive attitude to work in this valuable crop of
personnel.
CHAPTER
ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
It
is the duty and responsibility of a democratic government to provide protection
for the citizens through the creation of armed forces to keep the citizens of
the country safe from internal and external aggressions. The government also owes it a duty to provide
public services by ensuring that at least the minimum need of the citizens are
met such as education, health-care and other infrastructural facilities
including the provision of economic stability through employment and favourable
trade environment (Gomez, 2014).
It
must, however, be understood that government is an artificial person who is
required to carry out its functions through physical people. In Nigeria, therefore, we have the
Legislative arm of government which makes the laws for the good governance of
the citizens. These laws are to be
implemented by the executive arm of the government while the judiciary is
saddled with the responsibility of adjudicating and interpreting the laws made
by the legislature.
In
carrying out its duties, the executive arm of government relies on its civil
servants. Civil servants are employees
of government whether at federal, state or local government level, who are
engaged primarily to assist the career politicians (President, Governors,
Ministers or commissioners) in formulating and implementing government
policies. Based on their knowledge and
experience, they provide professional and technical advice on the policies
being made by government. As such, the
importance of the civil servants in assisting the government to deliver quality
service to the citizens cannot be overemphasized considering the fact that they
advise the government on matters of policy formulation and decision
making. Once the decision has been made,
it is their duty to also implement same.
It must be noted that the success or otherwise of any political
leadership is measured by the electorate through the level of amenities and
socio-cultural infrastructures provided for the use and convenience of the
citizens by the leadership. Yet, it is
the civil servants that the political leadership makes use of to provide these
amenities. If the civil servants do not
deliver effectively, it is the political leadership that the electorate hold
responsible. The best policy statement
by the political leadership is not better than the paper on which it is written
until it has been successfully implemented.
And that is the specialty of the civil servants. It is therefore in the best interest of the
political office holders to ensure that the civil servants are encouraged to
develop the right attitude towards their work.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
In
the distribution of functions under a democratic system of government, it is
the responsibility of the executive arm of government to implement the
programmes of the ruling political party.
In carrying out this all important responsibility, the executive arm
relies very much on its civil service.
The Lagos state civil service which was established in 1967 is not an
exception in this case. The state’s
civil service can be referred to as the engine room of the government. The service, being a permanent arm of the
administration vis-à-vis the ever changing political leadership, and being
blessed with experts in virtually all fields of endeavour, is ably equipped
with the wherewithal to provide the much needed essential data and critical
information that enables the government to make informed decisions and
policies. After the policy decision has
been made, it becomes the responsibility of the civil servants to effectively
implement same. The Lagos state civil
servants are therefore “powerful and strategically positioned” in the scheme of
things. As such, the success or
otherwise of the political leadership is a flection of how effectively the
civil servants carry out their duties. The political slogan during the
Babatunde Fashola Administration in Lagos state had been “Fashola is working;
Lagos State is working!” The slogan
bears witness to the fact that the government programmes were adjudged by the
citizens to be well implemented to their satisfaction. But the fact is that the Fashola that was
seen to be working was actually doing so through the state’s civil servants who
were giving him the much needed support and were working in tandem with the state
government’s objective of quality service delivery to the electorate. Considering the assessment of the Nigerian
civil service by Arowolo (2012) as an institution riddled with “corruption,
inefficiency, favouritism, nepotism, kick-backs, mismanagement, mediocrity,
etc., one begins to wonder how the civil servants under the Fashola
Administration were able to assist the government to achieve such success.
It
must be noted however, that how well these civil servants carry out their
duties depends to a large extent, on individual personal disposition. This means the type of attitude they have
(whether positive or negative) towards their work, the level of their job
satisfaction, and the extent of their commitment to their employers (the state
government). All these, in the long run,
bear a relationship to how effective their service delivery will be. It is the respective individual performance
that ultimately culminate in the overall achievement of the Fashola
Administration. There is therefore a
perceived relationship among the attitude to work of the Lagos state civil
servants, the level of their job satisfaction, the extent of their commitment
to their employers and how effectively they deliver service to the citizens of
the state on behalf of the political leadership. It is this perceived relationship that
constitute the gap in knowledge which this research sets out to fill.
1.3 Objective of the Study
The
main objective of the study is to find out the correlation between the attitude
to work of civil servants and political leadership performance in the selected
MDAs in Lagos State. The specific
objectives are to:
1.
establish the relationship between the
attitudes to work of civil servants in the selected MDAs in Lagos state and the
effectiveness in service delivery by political leaders;
2.
identify the relationship between the
attitude to work of civil servants in the selected MDAs and their job
satisfaction;
3.
investigate the job satisfaction of
civil servants in the selected MDAs with a view to establishing if it has any
significant effect on their service delivery;
4.
determine whether civil servants in the
selected MDAs are committed to their employers, that is the political
leadership and
5.
assess the commitment of civil servants
to their employers, the political leadership in the selected MDAs and its
effect on their service delivery.
1.4 Research Questions
- Is there any relationship
between the attitude to work of civil servants in the selected MDAs in
Lagos State and the effectiveness in service delivery by political
leaders?
- Does the attitude to work of civil
servants in the selected MDAs bear any relationship to their job
satisfaction?
- What effect does job
satisfaction of the civil servants in the selected MDAs have on their
service delivery?
- Are the civil servants in the
selected MDAs committed to their employers, the political leadership?
- Of what effect on their service delivery is the commitment of civil servants in the selected MDAs to their employers, the political leadership?
1.5 Hypotheses
The
hypotheses tested are null hypotheses which are:
Ho1: There is a significant relationship between
the attitude to work of civil servants in the selected MDAs in Lagos state and
the effectiveness in service delivery by political leaders.
Ho2: There is a significant relationship between
the attitude to work of civil servants in the selected MDAs in Lagos state and
their job satisfaction.
Ho3: The level of job satisfaction of civil
servants in the selected MDAs in Lagos state has a significant effect on their
service delivery.
Ho4: The level of commitment of civil servants
in the selected MDAs in Lagos state to their employers has a significant effect
on their job satisfaction.
Ho5: The commitment of civil servants in the
selected MDAs to their employers has a significant relationship with their
service delivery.
1.6 Significance of the Study
Civil
servants have invaluable roles to play in the success of any government. For them to give of their best and by so
doing uplift the image of the government through prompt and efficient policy implementation,
civil servants must be properly attuned to the goals of the government. It is therefore very important to have
positive attitudes to work to ensure effective service delivery. This study is therefore significant as it
would examine the relationship between the attitude of civil servants in Lagos
state and their job satisfaction as well as their commitment to their
employer’s goals and aspirations and how these impact on their service
delivery. The study would therefore
enable the Lagos state government acquire the requisite knowledge to encourage
positive attitudes in its civil servants.
It would also allow the state civil servants to appreciate the need to
develop positive attitudes to their work as they would see the direct impact
such attitudes have on service delivery of the political leadership.
1.7 Scope of the Study
The
study focused on civil servants in Lagos state.
The state consists of twenty-five Ministries and eighty-six Departments
and Agencies (see Appendices IIA and IIB).
Respondents were from seven MDAs.
These seven MDAs were selected because they are the ones whose evidence
of service delivery are physically available for assessment. The MDAs are responsible for the provision of
infrastructural facilities and environmental sanitation. They include:
- Lagos State Ministry of
Transportation
- Ministry of Works and
Infrastructures
- Lagos State Public Works
Corporation (LSPWC)
- Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport
Authority (LAMATA)
- Lagos State Traffic Management
Authority (LASTMA)
- Lagos Waste Management
Authority (LAWMA)
- Lagos State Environmental
Protection Agency (LASEPA)
The
study covered a period of five years from 2010 to 2014. The researcher is of the view that a span of
five years is sufficient a period to study the subject matter of this
research. Secondly, the five years fall
within the 8-year administration of Governor Babatunde Fashola who is
acknowledged as one of the most hard-working and successful among his peers in
the other states of the Federation. The
study position is that the attitude of his civil servants to work during this
period must have contributed to the laudable performance of his
administration. It is therefore worthy
of study.
The
study attempted, through the administration of guided questionnaires on the
target respondents, to find out if attitudes to work can have any impact on
service delivery of the political leadership, the type of attitudes that are
predominant among the Lagos state civil servants and what the government is
doing to develop the right attitudes in its workforce.
The
categories of civil servants studied are the second and third categories. These are the Middle Management and the
Senior Management cadres. These are the
two whose functions bear direct relationship to the subject matter of this
study.
1.8 Operational Definition of Terms
- Attitudes
to work: The interest shown or the
commitment displayed by a worker in his job performance towards the
realization of his organisation’s goals.
- Civil
Servants: The employees in the civil service
of a country either at federal or state level, entrusted with government
policy formulation and implementation.
- Service delivery: The manner in which civil servants ensure that government services get to the final consumers - the citizens.
1.9 Overview of Chapters
The
study is organized in the following five chapters:
Chapter One
contains the general introduction with a background to the study. The chapter states the problem to be
addressed and outlines the objectives against which the research work is to be
measured. It also provides relevant
research questions and hypotheses, the significance of the study as well as its
scope of coverage. It then provides
operational definitions of the terms used in the study.
Chapter Two
deals with the review of the literature that is relevant to the study. It examines what renowned authors have
written on the concept of attitude, attitude and perceptions, how attitudes
change and the relationship between attitude and performance. It goes on to look at the concepts of job
satisfaction and organizational commitment and how these affect work
performance. The chapter also delves
into the historical background of the Nigerian Civil Service, through its
various challenges and the reforms put in place to address them. It also places the Lagos State Civil Service
within the context of these reforms. The
chapter then provides a theoretical framework to the study of the
subject-matter laying emphasis on two important motivation theorists; Herzberg
and Adams.
Chapter Three
deals with the methodology by which the study was carried out. It describes the research design, examines
the population of the study and the sample size selected therefrom. It discusses the methods to be employed to
collect data, the sources of such data and the instrument to be used in
collecting the data. It looks at the
method of the data analysis, the limitation of the study itself and the ethical
considerations as well as the post-research benefits of the study.
Chapter Four
carries out a presentation and analysis of the data. It also goes on to test the formulated
hypotheses and then discusses the findings emanating from the tests and
analysis.
Chapter Five
provides a summary of the findings and concludes the study. It then makes relevant recommendations and
suggests areas for further studies for intending researchers.
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