Representative Bureaucracy and its Influence on Nation Building (A Study of Nigeria)

Abstract

Nigeria as a heterogeneous society consists of different people with various ancestral origins, languages, and cultures. It is therefore imperative to guarantee equity, justice and fairness in the allocation and distribution of resources, wealth and positions to the various ethnic groups in order to keep Nigeria as a single entity. This work investigated the effects of representative bureaucracy in guaranteeing equity and fairness in the distribution of national cake among these ethnic groups. Some of the findings of this work include that marginalization in employment into the federal civil service was responsible for conflicts among the ethnic groups in Nigeria, representative bureaucracy provides the modalities and schemes for redressing imbalances in Nigerian civil service, that representative bureaucracy did not promote ethnicity but encouraged nation building in Nigeria, merit should not constitute a weighty consideration even in seeking to achieve-geo-political balancing on recruitment in Nigerian civil service. The work also made some recommendations which include among others; that there should be functional mechanism for the effective implementation of federal character and quota system in Nigerian civil service and staff of the civil service should also be trained on the job to encourage professionalism.