Tansian University Journal of Arts, Management & Social Sciences

This study fundamentally seeks to examine the effect of federal character principle on the productivity of the Nigerian public sector with direct focus on the Federal Ministry of Education. Federal character principle is a policy alternative initiated by Nigerian government to ensure proper management of the public service with regards to even ethnic representation. The situation results to mutual mistrust and inter community conflicts has become perennial and endemic in the nation’s body politics and has militated against the political stability of the country since independence. Anchored on decision making theoretical framework, the researcher adopted an in-depth research method to carry out the study. Purposively, the researcher sampled fourteen staff from the fourteen different departments of the Federal Ministry of Education and guided by the study’s research analysis elicited useful information from them. Findings from the study revealed that there is less connection between productivity and federal character. It was also discovered that federal character is disastrous to productivity in the public sector. The study also found out that the northern part of Nigeria is favoured by federal character principle while the south is favoured mostly by merit. In the end, the study recommended that government should go back to the original plan of the federal character principle which does not undermine merit. Application of federal character principle in civil service must be blended with merit in order to dissuade mediocrity.

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