The Winifred Oyo-Ita you never knew
Okey Muogbo
She is the one who has been trending. She is Mrs Winifred Oyo-Ita, the newly appointed Head of the Civil Service of the Federation. The exit of Mr Danladi Kifasi, the occupier of the exalted position few days ago paved the way for the emergence of this amazon. Media practitioners talk about senior journalist: in accounting, Mrs Oyo-Ita is a senior accountant, in fact, a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN).
As expected, her appointment as the acting Head of Service (HOS) threw up, and most expectedly jolted her away from the quiet life, a typical permanent secretary life she has been living. She is today, by the grace of His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari, the number one civil servant in Africa’s most populous country.
By her appointment, President Muhammad Buhari (PMB) seems to have begun a real search for appropriate manpower to run his administration. She is a technocrat per excellence; the breed that is apparently in acuteshort supply in the in-coming federal cabinet as is clearly discernable from the people who have been nominated as ministers. Obviously, Mrs Winifred is not the only technocrat; indeed all senior public servants lay claim to being technocrats. But there are the good ones and then, the evils like those who gleefully connived with the military to destroy our polity and our bureaucracy. Winifred belongs to the good ones and you will soon understand.
For once, let us praise Buhari for ‘shinning’ his eyes well and getting an appointee who can add value to this administration’s governance drive. With more people like Winifred, may be, the much-awaited practical ‘chanji’ will come to fruition.
The Ag. HOS’s CV/profile is in the hands and heart of many Nigerians by now courtesy of the search machine-Google and the frenzy that erupts once somebody is given a very big government appointment. In any case, the post of HOS is a political one and so, suddenly, the quiet woman who has been running her civil service career has been thrown up with such-magnitude wave. A permanent secretary has no number in the federal political echelon and protocol. But the HOS surely has; something like number 10. That is why there is a big difference between a perm sec and a HOS. Winifred’s contemporaries before mid-October are no longer her equals by October 23. She too, is not the first woman to be appointed as HOS but for her to be appoint to that position in this dispensation of change- of anticorruption drive, and in particular by PMB makes her an extra-ordinary woman, specially blessed by God. After all, how many women have been lucky to be given sensitive positions in this administration?
Away from the Google dossier, Mrs Oyo-Ita has before her appointment put her name in the annals of public Administration in Nigeria. Not many people are aware of the fact that the new HOS was the person who successfully returned Nigeria into the fold of the Commonwealth Local Government Forum in 2013 as a full fledged member. Fate has a way of dealing with some people with kindness. In that year, at the Conference of the Forum in far away Uganda, Mrs Oyo-Ita, who was then newly tasting the tasks of a permanent secretary having just being elevated to that position, had the singular task of leading the Nigerian Delegation to the Forum’s Conference. Her minister in the Federal Ministry of Special Duties and Intergovernmental Affairs, Barrister Kabiru Tanimu Turaki, SAN, who was to represent (then) President Goodluck Jonathan at the Conference could not make the trip because he was occupied with a crucial meeting on tackling security challenges in the North. That was how the lot fell on the soft-spoken Accountant who, despite being a brand new perm sec then, took up the challenge to lead the powerful delegation to the intimidating Conference Hall of Kampala’s Munyonyo Hotel in the Uganda capital.
Calm, cool and calculated, Winifred participated in the meetings of the Forum, rubbing shoulders with at least three presidents who attended the Conference. The CLGF held the Commonwealth Local Government Conference in May, 2013, entitled “Developmental local government: Putting local government at the heart of development”. About 600 delegates from more than 40 Commonwealth and non-Commonwealth countries were in attendance. The conference discussed how a decentralized approach can more effectively ground development where it is most needed in villages, towns, and cities, while still reflecting national development strategies for growth. President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda opened the meeting and Sri Lanka’s President, Mahinda Rajapaksa gave the keynote address. Other distinguished guest speakers included President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Helen Clark, Administrator of the UNDP. Due to her brilliant performance, Nigeria was, at that Conference readmitted into the Commonwealth Forum’s Board. Not only that, for the first time in decades, Nigeria was instantly awarded the right to host a meeting of the Board in 2014, which the then Minister of Special Duties (Turaki) successfully hosted in Abuja. Prior to the Munyonyo Conference, Nigeria has been treated as a peripheral member of the Forum due, principally to the long period of military rule in Nigeria. That situation paved the way for Ghana to become the leader of the West Africa zone of the Forum. That ended with the attendance of the Oyo-Ita Delegation.
Again, the structures we have today as Federal Ministry of Special Duties and Intergovernmental Affairs were put in place by Turaki with the support of Mrs Winifred. They were the pioneer Minister and Perm Sec respectively of the Ministry after it was re-created in 2013, having been scrapped some years earlier. This elevation (to HOS) would be for her, some form of reward for her unrewarded labour at the Ministry of Special Duties where she and Turaki operated without a budget in 2013 because the Ministry was created in February after the 2013 budget had been passed in the December of 2012. This is the Winifred Oyo-Ita you probably didn’t know.