I maintain that Chief Falae has paid his dues in rendering distinguished service to Nigeria. As a civil servant, he was a first-class planning officer and economic wizard who rose to the post of a Permanent Secretary in record time. He was a consistently high performer who, like Chief John Oyegun, earned the epithet “flyer”. He indeed flew out of the civil service to the post of a banking chief executive where he also distinguished himself creditably. However, it was upon his return to the service in 1986, as Secretary to the Federal Government under President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, that he got deeply involved in the momentous decisions, policies and programmes of the time.
Chief Falae was the 9th holder of the post of Secretary to the Federal Government since Nigeria’s independence. His predecessors in office were S.O Wey, H. A. Ejueyitchie, Abdullaziz Attah, C. O. Lawson, G. A. E Longe, Allison Ayida, A. Liman Ciroma, and Shehu Ahmadu Musa. His successors included Mustafa Zanna Umara, Aliyu Mohammed, Aminu Saleh, Gidado Idris, U. J. Ekaete, Baba Gana Kingibe, Anyim Pius Anyim, Babachir David Lawal and Boss Mustapha.
Having joined the federal civil service in 1965 and worked in the Cabinet Office/the Presidency from 1972-1999, I had the honour and privilege of working under or with the office holders from S.O. Wey to Gidado Idris. This enabled me to discuss the attributes of some of them in my autobiography, Hatching Hopes. Chief Falae occupied a prominent place in that brief assessment. The Cabinet Office/the Presidency would forever remember Chief Falae for bringing private sector touch into government business. He gave a befitting facelift to that Office and introduced computer service to replace the archaic typewriters for good. It would not be out of place to claim that his innovation led to the demise of manual typewriters in government business.
Other far-reaching policy decisions and programmes took place during his tenure as Secretary to the Government and, later, as Minister of Finance. Notable among these were the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) which he vigorously espoused; the abolishment of the Commodity Marketing Boards, done to enable farmers get more money from their produce; the establishment of Peoples’ Bank to make it easier for the common people to access funds for petty trading; the establishment of the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (FEPA) following the clandestine and illegal deposit of toxic wastes at Koko Port; and the establishment of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) to check the rampant carnage on our roads.
Chief Falae also undertook a comprehensive inventory of Federal Government assets all over the country. The inventory thus compiled by the presidency was passed to the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing. That became the basis for the privatisation and disposal of government properties under the monetisation of fringe benefits programme. For Chief Falae, the Cabinet Office/the Presidency should be the incubator of ideas. They were markedly so during his tenure there.
The Civil Service Reform of 1988 was one other notable policy which Chief Falae, as Secretary to the Government, vigorously implemented. That led to the abolishment of the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, the designation of the Permanent Secretary as Director General and stripping the post of responsibility as Accounting Officer. A subsequent review by the Allison Ayida Panel under the General Sani Abacha administration led to the restoration of the post of the Head of Service and re-designation of the Directors General of ministries as Permanent Secretaries and the restoration of their responsibilities as Accounting Officers.
As Secretary to the Government, Chief Falae pushed very hard for wheat production in the country and the establishment of strategic silos for grains storage. At his instance, I visited Kaduna and Kano States among other places in the effort to promote wheat growing and report on inherent problems. Chief Falae’s negotiating skills and stratagem were fully tested during the crippling strikes over wages and the periodic increase in petrol price as well as the engagement with the international community over Nigeria’s quest for foreign debt relief.
Another notable achievement of his was the campaign he mounted to see to the better administration of the OAU intergovernmental organisation, the African Training and Research Centre in Administration for Development (CAFRAD). His mission was to ensure that the organisation was positioned to perform in a manner that benefitted all member states. He reasonably succeeded and became the chairman of that organisation.
A word needs to be said about the circumstances of the establishment of the Peoples’ Bank. Perhaps not many knew that the credit for the establishment should go to Chief Falae and Mrs Maria Sokenu, then a staff of Owena Bank. She sold the idea to Chief Falae who was the Secretary to the Federal Government. As Chief Falae sat in his office, and we sat before him, Mrs Sokenu said the Grameen Bank that was flourishing in Bangladesh was worthy of introduction in Nigeria. Chief Falae without hesitation bought the idea. Thereafter, things moved rapidly. President Babangida was quick to accept the novel idea.
What name the bank should bear was the next issue. The suggestion to call the bank “Bank for the Poor”, to reflect its conception, was rejected as rather insensitive. Government settled for the name, “Peoples’ Bank”. Mrs Sokenu was immediately appointed the Managing Director and Tai Solarin was appointed the Chairman. Next was a quick preparation for its launching. Ajegunle, the impoverished suburb of Lagos, was chosen for the establishment of its first branch which was to be opened by President Babangida.
I was directed to invite Joseph O. Sanusi, the Governor of the Central Bank, to attend the occasion. When I phoned to invite him, he asked, “Who issued the licence for the establishment of the bank?” I told him that he would not hear that from my mouth; the licence could come later, I said. We laughed over it. Normally, the Central Bank of Nigeria issues licence before the establishment of a bank. The opening ceremony proceeded with speed, as planned, and the institution of Peoples’ Bank, now known as the Community/Microfinance Bank, came into existence and has since subsisted.
One lesson to take away from here is that in nation-building, choice of words and names matter when it comes to public policy formulation and pronouncement. The inadvertent use of the word “colony”, for instance, was enough to throw the spanner in the works and hinder the current search for solutions to the age-old herdsmen/farmers crisis.
Read the Concluding part on www.independent.ng
Dr. Bukar Usman,
Abuja
END
Be the first to comment