Although, often defined by the shenanigan of anonymity, the civil service remains the engine room of national development. Since 1960 when Nigeria jettisoned colonialism, the civil service has, more than any other sector of the nation, entrenched the ideals of unity, service and survival. When the hot headed and ill-advised Northern soldiers declared araba (secession) in July 1966, it was the nation’s mandarins who interceded even at the risk of being shot by the same brutal soldiers who had murdered the Head of State, Major General J. T. U. Aguiyi-Ironsi.
The Murtala Mohammed and T. Y. Danjuma-led soldiers who killed Ironsi wanted the dissolution of Nigeria, “the mistake of 1914”, as Ahmadu Bello codified it. But the civil servants; Musa Daggash, H. A. Ejueyitchie, Ibrahim Damchidas, Yusuf Gobir and Allison Ayida stood their ground insisting that Nigeria must remain one indivisible entity. Ayida looked into the bloodshot eyes of the snarling soldiers and told them, “You must not allow the breakup of the country, because history will judge you and judge you harshly if you do”. The soldiers conceded and jettisoned secession. But an ambitious Lt. Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu was to lead the nation down the bloody path of secession a year later in 1967 when he declared a republic he named Biafra. A fratricidal war followed and Nigeria survived not because of its military might, but due to the strategic input of the civil servants.
After the war in 1970, the civil servants were to design a national development plan for Nigeria. They became so central to national evolution that some of them were dubbed “super permanent secretaries”. In spite of the alienating tag of anonymity, names like Simon Adebo, Allison Ayida, Abdulazeez Attah, Ahmed Joda, Phillip Asiodu among others attained national limelight. But that was to change after July 1975. A new military government was enthroned and the new sheriff in town found the civil service to be an Augean stable. The civil service was assailed and a great purge that emasculated it followed. Even after that the service continued to play a crucial role in national development.
If women played any significant role in the forgoing scheme it was largely unacknowledged or undocumented. Women were, probably, yet to attain the commanding height from where they could influence the nation’s destiny. But the story began to change in 1968 when Mrs. Folayegbe Akintunde-Ighodalo was appointed as Nigeria’s first female permanent secretary. That feat was consolidated by the emergence of Mrs. Tejumade Alakija as the first female head of service in Nigeria. Since then there has been no looking back for women in the civil service.
Besides the emergence of women as permanent secretaries and heads of service in the different states, they have also given a good account of themselves in the federal civil service. Ms. Ama Pepple served as the head of the civil service of the Federation, a position that is presently held by another woman in the person of Mrs. Winifred Oyo-Ita. It is within this resourceful tapestry of the civil service, the nation’s engine room, that one locates the personality of Chief Grace Etakibuebu Emoariojake Akpoguma who turns seventy today, 4th January, 2019. A thoroughbred mandarin, Akpoguma’s riveting story of service and stardom has been told in her memoirs aptly titled In Civil Service (2007). Chief Grace Akpoguma uttered her first earthly cry in Ikweghwu-Agbarho in the harmattan morning of 4th January 1949. Although, her father, Chief Patrick Onome Akpoguma, was a Lagos based civil servant, the young Grace was made to stay with her maternal grandmother, Mama Ewenare Erhoba at Ovu to continue her primary education after doing the first three years in Lagos. She again relocated to Warri where she completed it..
Her father’s vision of girl child education was against the grain in an era when the phenomenon was discouraged. He ensured that she proceeded to secondary school. She thus studied at Our Lady of Apostles in Ijebu-Ode from 1961 to 1966 where she maintained the top position in academics for most of the time. She was also at the Federal Government College, Warri, for the Higher School Certificate (HSC) from 1967 to 1968. She entered the University of Lagos to study Zoology in 1969. She graduated in 1972 with a second class upper division with honours and winning the Nnamdi Azikiwe Best Student Prize.
Grace Akpoguma resumed work as a civil servant in the old Midwest State on 14th July, 1972. She eloquently recreated that moment in her memoirs, “A new world, a new experience, was opening up before me”. That new world, the civil service, was to be her terrain for thirty-five years. Through grit and brilliance, she rose to become a permanent secretary and finally the head of the civil service of Delta State in March 2002, the first woman to reach the pinnacle of the service in the state. Akpoguma’s knowledge of the civil service is encyclopedic and her training at the National Institute for Policy and Strategy Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, strengthened her capacity which she brought to bear in repositioning the Delta State civil service to meet the challenges of the 20th century. Her remarkable performance as head of service was to recommend her for higher service at the national level and the veil of civil service anonymity was torn. She was to serve as federal minister in two different ministries between 2007 and 2010.
Chief Grace Akpoguma is endowed with a brilliant and critical mind. She is meticulous even fastidious and she represents the best of the civil service. Her memoir, In Civil Service, reflects the sublimity of everything she has been associated with. She should be teaching at Kuru or in a university. As she turns seventy her story has become a song. A visit to her on Christmas day saw her surrounded by children and grandchildren. Her home was a song, a song befitting her at seventy although she looks fifty!
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