CHAPTER ONE

 INTRODUCTION

1.1       BACKGOUND TO THE STUDY

When a country has one Chief Executive who is both normal arid political head of state, wielding real executive power and responsible to the legislature for his political actions, that country is operating a presidential system of government.

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ThdI United States of America and Nigeria are examples. Policies in varying degrees are made by the presidential system of government that directly or indirectly affects the Nigeria

civil service. One of the cardinal obligations of the Governinent is to take care of the citizens from cradle to the grave. In pursuance of this lofty obligations, the government relies solely on the activities and performances of the civil

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service. Over the year, government had been making effort to achieve a veritable and result-oriented civil service but all effort

to achieve that seems to be a mirage. This is why recruitment, selection and placement of civil servants in the Ebonyi qtate civil service cannot be over-looked by any rational scholar

I  Every   organization   needs   three   main   resources   to

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survive. These are financial, material and human resources. Even if an organization has got all the money and the material it needs, it must still find capable people to put them into effective use. It is therefore safe to claim that human resources are about the most important of the three essential resources of an organization. It is equally true to say that human resources are the highest assets of any organization, because no matter the

amount of capital invested i n an organization, it's success or failure depends on the quality of people who execute it's programme.

It is based on the above underscore of the importance of

personnel of an organization that, Ubeku (1975: 19), said that

.some organizations without well-established personnel depSrtments fall into the error of looking for staff as and when

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necessary.   Ubeku contended that this is bad management.    As

stated earlier, the personnel of an organization determines the successes or failure of the organization. When the personnel

polic 1es. .in  a                   presidential system          of    government   are         well

articulated, there will be a boast of human resources.

1.2       STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Civil service means those officials who are charged with the responsibility of carrying out policies of the government. They are brain, eyes, hands, legs, and philosophers of the executive arm of government. Staff recruitment, selection and

placement in the Nigeria civil service has been a problem over the year. Many scholars have strived in diverse dimensions to establish a rational ways of staff recruitment . Distinguishing

feature of max Weber, the German Sociologist's ideal model of bureaucracy is that civil servants be selected purely on the basis

of merit, ascertained through written examination(rather than by

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.elecbion  or  on  the  basis  of   Apiriori  characteristics), (Max

To stem the tide of personnel recruitment problem, the Ebonyi state government has prescribed the guiding principle in

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order to achieve the desired objectives of the Federal character

comrpission as set out in section  14(3) and  14(4) of the  1999

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constkution. Regarding employment in the public service, and in exercise of it's power under section 5(1) of the instruments establishing the Federal character comn~ission,it has decided that henceforth, recruitment shall be on Local government basis or on senatorial zonal basis, or on ward basis, depending on the number of candidates to be en~ployed.

However, the federal character policy which the civil service cornmission in Ebonyi state seek to promote, is not without peculiar and enormous problems. The Federal character principle negates the principle of fair competition and promotes mediocrity in the service which invariably retards development. The main problem of this study is to evaluate the ,impact of quota system policy of staff recruitment, selection and placement in the result-orientation of the Fhonyi state civil

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service.

To enhance the efficacy, rationality and objectivity, the study, shall be guided by the following research questions:

1.          Is the quota system of staff recruitment, selection  and

placement in the civil service in Ebonyi state serving the better inter 1st. of the Ebonyians?

2.                 What are the impact of the quota system on the output of the Ebonyi state civil service?

3.                 I f . the federal character or quota system of staff recruitment, selection and placement is reformulated to balance with the concept of merit, will there be effectiveness and efficiency in the state civil service?

1.3       OBJECTIVE OF TI-JESTUDY:

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The general objective of the study is to find out the effects of quota system policy on recruitment, selection and placement on the performance of Ebonyi state civil service. In specific terms, the objective of the s t l l ~ lare~?

1.    To identify and describe the extent to which the po