Contentment Panacea to Corruption in Civil Service – 92-year Old Ex-Perm Sec

Yinka Kolawole in Osogbo

A 92-year-old retired Permanent Secretary in the old Western Region; Prince Gabriel Oyinlola, has indentified contentment, discipline and being principled as the only panacea to corruption and other sharp practices in Nigeria’s civil service.

Pa Oyinlola, who is a community leader in Ila-Orangun, the homestead of the first National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Bisi Akande, attributed the fraudulent practices in the civil service to desperation to get rich and acquire wealth suddenly by the civil servants.

He stated this on Tuesday while launching his autobiography titled: “Harvest of God’s Grace” in Osogbo, Osun State.

Maintaining that no government could function properly and effectively in the absence of civil servants, Pa Oyinlola stated that what is lost among the civil servants of the present time is contentment and principle.

The pioneer member of the Governing Council of the then Oyo State University of Technology (now Ladoke Akintola University of Technology), however, said that the present civil service is filled with both the bad and the good.

He argued that one could not appraise the present civil service without acknowledging both the negative and the positive character and attitude of the civil servants to work, maintaining that it would be unfair to right-off the present civil service system.

Pa Oyinlola said: “what is missing in today’s civil service is contentment and self-principle, and that is not even limited to the workers alone. Everybody in the society is affected. If the workers are contented and self-principled, corruption would vamoose in the civil service and in the society at large.

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