Imitation or innovation ? : reflections on administrative reforms in Nigeria

Abstract EN

Administrative reform is a burning issue that has long been a subject of great intellectual concern in terms of diagnostic reflection in identifying its goals, methodologies, pathologies and prescriptions on how to solve its problems.

This article reflects on the administrative reforms in Nigeria, with a view to understand whether it is an imitation or a unique innovation and seeks to highlight the imports of global dynamism and influence on the nation’s administrative reform model and its imports for professionalization in the civil service.

Based on desk analysis, this article reveals that administrative reform in Nigeria is an imitation of reforms in older countries such as Britain, France and America.

Furthermore, the article argues that though the idea of imitating reforms elsewhere is not essentially wrong particularly with the increasing advancements in globalization through information and communication technologies and the attendant inherent opportunities they offer, but it emphasizes the need for a modeling country to be guided by strategic vision.

Nigeria seems not have been strategically guided with vision in its administrative reforms and this has severely defeated professionalization in the civil service