Should civil servants participate in partisan politics?

Quite recently, public discourse was again forced to consider an old discourse that borders on the whether or not civil servants have the right to engage in partisan politics. Indeed, on August 15, 2025, the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HCSF) fired a salvo on the crucial need to safeguard the political […]

Quite recently, public discourse was again forced to consider an old discourse that borders on the whether or not civil servants have the right to engage in partisan politics. Indeed, on August 15, 2025, the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HCSF) fired a salvo on the crucial need to safeguard the political neutrality of the civil servants. And in response to the old Supreme Court judgement, which reiterates the constitutional provision allowing any citizen of Nigeria to participate in politics, the HCSF argues that the constitutional provision permits civil servants the fundamental right to privately support any party of their choice without being drawn into the murky space of high-stake political activities. It did not take too long for the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), through its president, Mr Joe Ajaero, to respond. And it was typical. The NLC countered that both the Nigerian 1999 Constitution and the 2003 Supreme Court judgement—in the INEC v Musa and Others—foreground the right of civil servants, like all other Nigerians, not just to be card-carrying party members, but to also be involved in all other political activities.

The interesting issue is that both the HCSF and the NLC president pointed at the constitutional and the Supreme Court support for that legal stipulation of the constitutional provision of Section 40 of the Nigerian Constitution. However, the HCSF insists that civil servants, while adhering to this constitutional provision, must keep in mind the fundamental significance Public Service Rules which constrain the administrative behaviour of civil servants. Section 4 of the PSR defines serious misconduct as “a specific act of very serious wrongdoing and improper behaviour which is inimical to the image of the service and which can be investigated and if proven, may lead to dismissal.” The PSR indeed situate engaging in partisan politics as an act of serious misconduct. Does the Public Service Rule then undermine the Nigerian constitutional stipulation?

There is no easy way to mediating this discourse. The two sides of the debate are cogent in the understanding of how the political status of a civil servant must be construed. At the base of this disagreement between the HCSF and the NLC is the most fundamental dichotomy that inaugurated the public administration. This is the politics-administration distinction which insists that politicians and civil servants have different remits in the running of a state. However, this dichotomy is not so easily explained and outlined. This is because it is simply a theoretical construct that different administrative traditions, approaches and contexts could interpret differently. Max Weber notes in this connection that a civil servant can either live for politics or live from politics. And both are not mutually exclusive.

Weber had the example of Otto von Bismarck who exemplifies living ‘for” politics in both senses of the allure of the naked possession of power and that of serving a cause. As Chancellor, Bismarck inevitably fell into a serious conflict with Emperor Wilhelm II in terms of the content of Germany’s domestic and foreign policies and how they affect the lives of Germans. The Wilhelm-Bismarck power struggle constitutes one perspective about the politics-administration dichotomy. On the flip side of that dichotomy is the Awolowo-Adebo collaborative efforts that was the basis of the celebrated governance success of the old western region. The Awolowo-Adebo administrative model emerged from Nigeria’s inheritance of the apolitical British civil service system. This tradition of public administration is common all across the Commonwealth countries. The British civil service system was designed to be thoroughly impartial; civil servants are trained to serve the government of the day with utmost impartiality regardless of whatever political opinions or views they hold. Unfortunately, one of the traumatic fallouts of the military incursion into Nigerian politics is the distortions of this governance, political and administrative coherence.

How do we then tie this historical and conceptual reflections together? I suspect that the Supreme Court judgment which grounds the provision of the 1999 Constitution on partisan political engagement of Nigerians cannot be the final answer on the matter. And this position is far from being counterintuitive, coming from the Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission. This is my argument. The Constitutional order of the Nigerian state cannot answer to all realities, economic, political, sociocultural, administrative, and even governance. Thus, while the Constitution is fundamentally right, at the most general level of the fundamental, the constitution cannot legislate at the level of the concrete on what is best for the civil service system as both an administrative system and a profession in its own right. That has to be handled with an administrative wisdom and legality that would not undermine the constitutional order.

This discourse brings to the fore cogent and fundamental questions: How should the classic politics-administration dichotomy be reconceived within the framework of a new theory of change for institutional reform given Nigeria’s peculiar socio-political reality? What system of public administration is best for Nigeria at this stage in its evolution and for its transformation journey? What should be the role of the state and its constitutional order in that journey? These are key questions to reflect on in the light of two important objectives. The first is that Nigeria needs to become a developmental state. A developmental state has to plug into the fourth and fifth industrial revolutions. The second objective is that the public service must in time, even if aspirational, become a world class institution that can effectively and efficiently backstop the developmental aspirations of the Nigerian state.

This is where all critical stakeholders, from the OHCSF and the Federal Civil Service Commission to the NLC owe the public administration a sacred responsibility. The best way to go is, however, not to embroil these civil servants in Nigeria’s political complexities. This, I believe, is the cogent insight the HCSF is trying to pass across.

 

Olaopa is the Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission & a professor of Public Administration