ABSTRACT
Nigeria is among the countries of the world endowed with enormous human resources as evident in its large population of approximately one hundred and fifty million people. However, the country has continued to battle with serious development crises over the years. This paper argues that a major factor for explaining Nigeria’s predicaments is her inability to develop the right human capital mixes. Against this backdrop, this paper primarily examines the major barriers to human capital development in Nigeria. It finds that Nigeria’s efforts at developing formidable human capital is challenged by certain inadequacies in the education and health sectors such as underfunding, dearth of infrastructures, corruption, examination malpractice, “Brain Drain, among other factors. In view of this, this paper’s broad recommendation is that Nigeria needs to prioritize human capital development in its national development plan, and thus review its education and health policies and increase budgetary allocation to these two critical sectors to meet UNESCO and WHO specifications. The paper is theoretical and qualitative in approach. It relies mainly on secondary sources for its data. The descriptive method of qualitative data analysis was employed to analyze the data in a bid to enable objective and insightful discussion.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of study
The 1999 Constitution defines the Civil Service of the Federation as ‘service of the Federation in a civil capacity as staff of the Office of the President, the Vice-President, a Ministry or department of the Government of the Federation assigned with the responsibility for any business of the Government of the Federation’’ b(part iv,318 (1). The civil service of the federation is the organ of the government that is responsible for the implementation and execution of Federal Government policies, programs and decisions; they are often regarded as the fourth tier of government. Their roles and functions are so crucial and indispensable that no government can do without them.
The Nigeria civil service is an important institution of the state, which affects the lives of the citizens daily. It is essential to modern life because of the roles it plays in ensuring that the policies and programs of government are translated into action and brought to reality. Ezeani (2004:188) highlighted that “the civil service remains a vital instrument for rapid socio-economic development of any nation, for any meaningful development and achievement to take place, the civil service must be properly positioned and equipped”.
In view of the above, for civil service to achieve her objectives, the personnel have to be fully developed and equipped properly. This view is supported by, Moscher in Nwizu, and Nwapi (2011:15) who formulated four propositions about the civil service:
The decision and behaviour of the civil service have tremendous influence upon the future and development of our society, our economy, and our policy. The great bulk of decisions and activities by government are determined or heavily influenced by administrative officials. The kinds of decisions and activities the officials take depend upon their capacities, their orientations and their values. The attributes depend heavily upon their background, their training, education and other current associations. From the above we can deduce that Civil Service can tremendously influence the development of our society, economy and policy, the same Civil Service determine most of the government actions and inactions, the performance of Civil Service is also dependent on their capacity and competence which is equally dependent on their background, training, and education. The implication of the above is that Human Capital Development must be given priority in Nigeria Civil Service.
