Office of CNA: Amos Ojo on the eve of his retirement, By Sufuyan Ojeifo

On Tuesday, February 14, 2023, the administration of Architect Amos Olatunde Ojo as Clerk to the National Assembly, CNA, will come to a terminus. The curtains will obligatorily be drawn on his era; and, history, acting in concert with posterity, will kick in to remember him either for good or bad in the way and manner he consummated his stewardship. Will history remember the outgoing CNA for good and will posterity judge him kindly?

It is, however, significant to indicate that the entire National Assembly bureaucracy is heaving a big sigh of relief that Ojo has less than twenty-fours of office time to spend as retirement has finally and inescapably caught up with him. He will leave the National Assembly bag and baggage, after the battle of wits and grits that sustained him in office beyond November 14, 2022 when he was expected to have proceeded on his three-month pre-retirement leave.

Looking back, what he achieved by staying put in office was a pyrrhic victory that has robbed him of the celebratory halo and goodwill by top management staff members and others who operate in the National Assembly ecosystem. For someone who had been in the saddle as CNA since 2020, this would have been the time for subordinates to roll out the drums in festivity to celebrate his era, his stewardship, were they to be luminous. But as it is, it does appear that during his era, he failed to harbour, build and nurture a bank of social capital.

For instance, his leadership style generated so much dialectics between management and workers under the aegis of the Parliamentary Association of Nigeria (PASAN) such that in the history of the Fourth Republic National Assembly, his era witnessed the most cases of either threatened or actualized industrial actions. Whereas, ensuring that the workforce was taken care of should have been the directive principle of his administration, he failed to do so. The summative conclusion by the staff members is that Ojo’s administration was short on building the strategic imperative of a robust workers’ welfare regime but long on irritating promises anytime PASAN threatened or declared industrial action(s). They relate with the era as sad and sardonic in the history of management of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic National Assembly.

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The broad consensus by staff members, who spoke on the Ojo era was that he cut the picture of a leader who, like Emperor Nero, was fiddling while Rome was burning. Legend has it that while a fire destroyed the city of Rome, Emperor Nero was playing his violin, thus revealing his total lack of concern for his people and his empire. On a strict comparative basis, Ojo provided the administrative wing of the National Assembly with the most uninspiring leadership ever, unable to improve on the records of successes achieved by his predecessors, namely Adamu Fika, Ibrahim Salim, Nasir Arab, Yemi Ogunyemi, Salisu Maikasuwa and Sani Mohammed Omolori.

Apart from the failure to raise the bar of performance, they pointed to his apparent lack of capacity and acumen to occupy such an exalted position. Others said he came largely unprepared for the job and with a leadership deficit that was writ large. His background as an architect stripped him of the requisite administrative savvy and legislative legerdemain. And because, he could not give what he did not have, he decided to focus his attention on the mundane and the outlandishly questionable management of funds appropriated for the NASS management since he stepped in the saddle in 2020. A staff member was unrepentantly uncharitable in his appraisal of Architect Ojo. Read him: “How do you expect a self-opinionated carpenter or technician to run a textbook administration and provide a sound and superlative leadership direction? Was he professionally primed about the requirements or comprehensive mandates of the office as an Architect? Remember that all his predecessors had backgrounds in humanities and the social sciences. Omolori is a lawyer. Maikasuwa has a PhD in Public Administration. None of the others studied pure or applied sciences. Ojo studied Architecture. He should not have been made the CNA but for the fact that he was the most senior top management staff member when Omolori was hurriedly made to exit as the CNA.”

There is no reprieve for Architect Ojo as another staff member slammed a charge of an ethnic bigot on him. As a Yoruba man, he said Ojo did not have tolerance for other ethnic nationals. It is however somewhat difficult to validate this verdict. Another staff member claimed, and this too is debatable, that Architect Ojo came in to “improve” himself at the detriment of the staff members and institution of NASS management. The position of yet another staff member was that Architect Ojo wore vindictiveness as cloth, dealing with anyone who dared to challenge him or his policies and styles, regardless of the cadre of the staff members.

What surprised a watcher of developments in the National Assembly was the fact that as an Architect, the outgoing CNA (Ojo) presided over a dilapidated complex without the passion to prove that architecture being his forte, he should at least demonstrate his expertise by ensuring that the ecosystem is given noticeable facelifts. It is, indeed, a fact of history that on his watch, the National Assembly complex suffered the most structural dilapidation with the consequential effects on the legislators, who could not sit, on a number of occasions, due to leakages in roofs of their chambers.

Under Architect Ojo’s leadership, staff members’ morale and motivation were at their lowest ebb as staff members saw no reason for being present at and/or punctual to work. “He ran the National Assembly like an emperor,” according to a staff member. Validation: For almost a year in office, he did not, according to an insider’s claims, convene Tenders Board meetings, where procurement processes were supposed to be determined with the appropriate administrative decisions to back them up. Rather, he solely or singly did things the way he wanted in anticipatory fashions and subjected his actions to post hoc ratifications.

There were credible feelers that the National Assembly Clinic was one of the worst-hit departments on his watch. His policy of divide-and-rule and deliberate stifling of departments with funds frustrated the officers in the clinic as they were most times denied funds to stock up the clinic with essential drugs. He was said to have implemented the ungodly policy without remorse. A CNA who craves the institutionalisation of legacies would not chart that trajectory or take that route. He would advisedly fund all the departments within available resources even if the resources would be thinly spread to cover the field. He was obdurately and incurably not strategic in the management of public finance in the full glare of the top management staff members and the entire workforce.

He had extended that stubborn streak to the issue of retirement. All previous CNAs before him, took their three months pre-retirement leave, so as to pave the way for their successors to seamlessly take over while they attended to processes that would make easy their disengagement, payment of their entitlements, subsequent pensions and matters miscellany. In essence, the three-month leave always gives ample time for perfecting documentation, preparatory to their retirement, but Architect Ojo introduced a very negative precedent when he bludgeoned his way through and dismantled the pre-retirement culture of the civil service by refusing to comply, which is the reason he has remained in office till the last day of his service, to wit: February 14, 2023.

His stay in office till his last minute of his service (years) as the CNA has signposted a very dangerous precedent, which other management staff members can refer to or leverage in the future just because one Architect Ojo, who acted like a bull in the China shop, took on the entire system in a rare wrongheaded action that powerful forces in the National Assembly and the National Assembly Service Commission allowed to thrive. Having succeeded in diminishing the system that threw him up by having his way against all odds, what happens now that his time is up?

Perhaps, because of his rough tactics and crude leadership style that were egocentric, some staff members have suggested that calling on the anti-graft bodies to host Architect Ojo as their guest as soon as he saunters into the retirement world, would not be a bad idea.

As he takes a bow on February 14, 2023, Valentine’s Day, a day that love is lavishly shared, it is doubtful if staff members’ disposition to Architect Ojo finds anchorage in love. His exit, as far as they are concerned is good riddance! If there is something they love and openly demonstrate, it is the beginning of a new era, which Sani Magaji Tambuwal steps into as acting CNA prelude to his subsequent confirmation by National Assembly Service Commission. The incoming acting CNA is said to cut the picture of a gentle, simple, self-effacing man with eyes sharply focused on the ball. A good listener, who is accessible to all, he is said to be wholly committed to the wellbeing and welfare of staff members.

The greatest capital that any CNA can enjoy from the staff members is their confidence in his leadership. This is usually a product of credibility, which Tambuwal has demonstrated since stepping in the saddle as acting CNA. A staff member said: “He has so far demonstrated honesty of purpose and commitment to the ideal of good management anchored on the principle of servant leadership. He has been keeping to his words and matching them with necessary actions. We look forward to a more prosperous national assembly under Sani Magaji Tambuwal, the incoming clerk to the national assembly.”

Whether or not Tambuwal will be able to live up to the expectations of the NASS workforce is left for time to show. Meanwhile, it is celebration time as staff members see the back of Architect Amos Olatunde Ojo simpliciter.

● Ojeifo contributed this piece from Abuja via ojwonderngr@yahoo.com