SERVICOM and Public Service Delivery in Nigeria: A study of Akwa Ibom State University

SERVICOM and Public Service Delivery in Nigeria: A study of Akwa Ibom State University

Williams Ikhenoba, & Dr. Ofonmbuk Etido Atakpa

Department of Public Administration, Faculty of Management Science, Akwa Ibom State University

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2023.70564

Received: 30 April 2023; Accepted: 06 May 2023; Published: 08 June 2023

ABSTRACT

The quality, efficiency and impact of public service delivery remains an issue of grave concern in Nigeria as the Nation is known for its endemic poor public service delivery and productivity. To tackle this vice, its former President, Olusegun Obasanjo in March 2004, using its administrative powers ordered the establishment of SERVICOM Units in all Federal government ministries, departments and parastatals.  This would later extend to the National Universities Commission and all Federal and State Universities in Nigeria. A synthesis of the SERVICOM charter shows that its central focus is on enhancing quality and measurable service delivery.  The literature review and the theoretical framework grounded on Douglas McGregor’s famous Theory X and Y revealed that a third party inspector such as SERVICOM is a necessity in the public service delivery chain to ensure public services are delivered in a quantitative, qualitative, customer centric, affordable, accessible and predictable manner.  Using a survey research and ANOVA, the researchers found that 93.80% of the respondents have not received the necessary awareness on the services of SERVICOM while 88.08% confirm that SERVICOM has not been monitoring their services.  The study concludes that the inability to provide the needed awareness and monitoring had a significant negative effect on staff service delivery.  It then made useful recommendations such as immediate commencement of a structured awareness programmes, monitoring and alignment with its sister unit in the institution towards the realization of the SERVICOM mandate.

Keywords: SERVICOM, Service Delivery, Quality, Public Productivity, Customer, Public Service

INTRODUCTION

Issues of public service delivery will always dominate discussions in academic and policy circles (Talbot, 2010). In an address at the opening of the Special Presidential Retreat on Service Delivery, which held in Abuja from March 19 – 21, 2004, Nigeria’s former President Olusegun Obasanjo said: “service is what we offer ourselves for; and service is what the people are entitled to expect from us” (The SERVICOM Book, 2006).  The Retreat was concluded with the birth of “Service Compact (SERVICOM) with all Nigerians in a 5-point declaration.  Element 1.0 states as follows:

We, the President, the Vice President, the Ministers, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Special Advisers, Presidential Aides and Permanent Secretaries of the Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria hereby enter into the following solemn compact with all Nigerians. We dedicate ourselves to providing the basic services to which each citizen is entitled in a timely, fair, honest, effective and transparent manner (The SERVICOM Book, 2006, p. 14).

To assure result, the government directed the establishment of an independent Unit in all federal and state government establishments to be known as SERVICOM whose duty is to strengthen mainstream staff to deliver the statutory services expected of them through the development of service agreements and holding the staff accountable through monitoring.

      SERVICOM was a bold attempt at institutionalizing measurable service delivery by public servants.  Prior to the birth of SERVICOM, there was pervasive sloppiness in public service delivery.  The customer or client had to beg and bribe before getting service from a public servant.  Only the connected with a complimentary card or reference letter from “Oga” and the wealthy who could afford to pay bribe or offer financial inducement got attention.  The customer without any of these will either not be served or would have to wait longer than is necessary before getting service.  The customer had no value and was not known.  That age long word “customer” was restricted to the private traders in open markets. There was no attempt to satisfy him, because public officials felt they were doing him a favour.  But Ajila and Ibukun (2021), avers that “customer satisfaction is the overriding consideration of service delivery”.

Ekwoaba, et al (2017), argues that the tendency by a majority of public employees to engage in behaviours inimical to “prompt and efficient service delivery” has negative impact on the finance and image of organizations. Samuel (2016, p. 49-50), holds a similar but stronger view.  In his opinion, bad attitude of workers to service delivery has wide ranging consequences which includes declined productivity; bad national image; slow growth and development and even a “national disaster”.  Effective and efficient service delivery is central towards the resolution of all these vices, for if we get it right, these vices will naturally fizzle into oblivion.   This is the reason economist, planners, administrators and indeed all right thinking human beings pay attention to productivity; doing everything necessary to ensure a productive work force at all times.  Productivity is the end product of a living service delivery system.  This is the brain behind the creation of SERVICOM and, indeed, its essence.  But how productive is SERVICOM in stimulating quantitative and qualitative service delivery of the staff of Akwa Ibom State University and to what extent is it strengthening them to deliver “timely, fair, honest, effective and transparent” services as required of SERVICOM.  That is the essence of this paper.  

Statement of the Problem:

      Former President Olusegun Obasanjo is credited to have made the following statement in June 2003 while lamenting the poor state of public service delivery in Nigeria:

Nigerians have for too long been feeling short-changed by the quality of public service. Our public offices have for too long been showcases for the combined evils of inefficiency and corruption, whilst being impediments to effective implementation of government policies. Nigerians deserve better. We will ensure they get what is better! (SERVICOM Book, 2006:5)

      SERVICOM was established in 2004 to ensure Nigerians “get what is better” than poor quality public service, inefficiency and corruption.  SERVICOM was to do this by carrying out certain defined functions that will ensure public servants provide basic services which citizens are entitled to “in a timely, fair, honest, effective and transparent manner”. However, nearly two decades after its birth, it is still widely believed that the body is not leaving up to its expectation.

       The charter, roles and functions of SERVICOM places on her the noble burden of facilitating the delivery of top notch services by the staff of public institutions.  Therefore, this study was to investigate the extent to which SERVICOM have facilitated the delivery of staff services in Akwa Ibom State University as a public institution.

Objectives of the Study

      This research paper is to study how well SERVICOM has done in its mandate of facilitating quality service delivery in Akwa Ibom State University being a public institution.by investigating the extent of awareness of its services and specific key activities carried out by her to achieve its mandate of enhancing public service delivery in the institution.

Research Questions

1. What is the level of awareness of the services of SERVICOM by the staff of Akwa Ibom State University community?
2. What is the level of monitoring by SERVICOM on AKSU staff services delivery?

Research Hypothesis

Ho₁: Lack of awareness of SERVICOM services by AKSU staff does not have a significant negative impact on staff services delivery.

Ho₂: Lack of adequate service monitoring by SERVICOM does not have a significant negative impact on staff service delivery. 

CONCEPTUAL REVIEW & CLARIFICATIONS

SERVICOM

SERVICOM is an acronym formed from two words: SERVICE COMPACT and formed as follows: “SERVI-COM”. According to Aliyu (2017), Compact denotes a formal agreement between the Government and all its institutions and the Nigerian citizens.

SERVICOM mandate in Nigeria public universities include:

• Delivery of quality services designed around customers’ requirements.
• Commitment to provision of services within realistic time-frames.
• Specification of officials to whom complaints may be addressed.
• Creating awareness of citizens’ [customers] rights and entitlements in an unambiguous language.
• Publication of fees payable and prohibition of illegal demands.
• Conduct and publish surveys of customer satisfaction.

The mandate require that SERVICOM not only to publicise itself, roles and activities but that such details should be published in “conspicuous places accessible to the public in all buildings where the agencies provide their services and on the Internet” (The SERVICOM Book, 2006, p. 14).

To achieve the above mandate, SERVICOM was required to amongst other things to sensitize the University Community about its activities; develop Customer Care Policy and raise the level of customer satisfaction by monitoring service delivery and report on staff performance; develop and publicize customer complaints handling and management procedure; formulate and implement Service Charter or Service Improvement Plan (SIP); identify and diagnose Service Delivery failures and proffer solutions.

The SERVICOM Service Delivery Programme as conceived by the government was meant to raise the bar of public service delivery in Nigeria by communicating service entitlements and rights to consumers; publishing information about staff performance and

demonstrate leadership commitment to public service delivery, part of which entails a public declaration about Service Delivery from top management. SERVICOM was an attempt by government to ensure its institutions distinguish themselves in productivity and the provision of high quality service to citizens.

In line with the above policy objectives and strategies, and to comply with the National Universities Commission requirement, the Akwa Ibom State University established a SERVICOM Department in 2020.

Service Delivery

Service delivery used to be a common parlance in private organizations organized around customers.  However, its usage has significantly increased so that it now has an epochal place in the bureaucracy and public organizations.  Also, depending on the focus and context, service delivery could mean different things, albeit with very close similarities.

Spacey (2015), views service delivery as “the end-to-end process of providing a service to customers or the internal clients of an organization”. The process, the author explains typically includes designing, development, deployment and operation.

Martins & Ledimo (2015) citing the work of Lovelock and Wright (2001), sees service delivery as an event which takes place upon the receipt of a product or service by a customer, client or beneficiary.  The problem with this approach is that it is silent on salient issues universally recognized as components of service delivery such as time, quality and specification.

As an item in contractual agreement, Spacey (2015), conceptualizes service delivery as the management of the contractual and financial aspects of service level agreements excluding service support.  Here service delivery is limited to the delivery of the items defined in the agreement but does not include other support activities needed to maintain the service after delivery.  That is how intriguing the term could be. Therefore, in this paper our focus is on public service delivery particularly against the background that SERVICOM is set up to operate in public institutions and the Akwa Ibom State University is a public institutions. 

Public Service Delivery

               Taking a cue from Spacey (2015) definition, we define service delivery as all actions and activities embarked upon from conceptualization to final handover to deliver a well-defined product or service to a known consumer.  The product or service must be predefined with delivery schedule, quality and specification stated in unambiguous terms.  The consumer must also be predefined so that the service provider will design its product or service with him in mind, that is, to meet its taste, demand and general requirements.  When we add public as a prefix, it simply mean the product or service is been delivered by a public organization.

Public Service Delivery is, therefore, the process of delivery quality services by public institutions to consumers of its products and services.

Public service delivery is considered essential in order to make them affordable and accessible to the citizens many of whom would not be able to afford them if left in the hands of the private sector.  This is why the provision of education, health, water, security etc are considered as the core function of the government.  According to Jackson (2020), “public service is the engine of effective governance delivery …  [for] governments across the world cannot function well without the enabling structures of public administration to deliver on their mandate … for meeting citizens’ basic welfare needs”.

Hasenfeld (2009), explains that public service delivery caries the duty of care and commitment to the wellbeing of citizens.  However, public organizations are often burdened with a bureaucracy whose rules and behaviour makes the achievement of this laudable objective difficult to attain. To overcome this challenge, the government often ends up creating another layer of bureaucracy whose duty is to monitor the main service provider.  All nations suffer from this public service plague. There are a host of them in Nigeria such as the Standards Organization of Nigeria (SON), the National Agency for Foods, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) and the subject of this paper, SERVICOM.

Failure of public service delivery can lead to catastrophic events including breakdown of law and order.  Morudi (2017), writes that insufficient and poor public service delivery is the major reason for proliferation of public protests in South Africa. When the poor have difficulty assessing public service, they rebel against the government and the institutions saddled with the responsibility to provide such services; a phenomena Alexander (2010), calls “rebellion of the poor”.  Breakfast et al (2019) reports a staggering figure of more than 8,000 such ‘rebellion’ between 1994-2019; and (Martin, 2021), reports that over 900 of such protests took place in same South Africa in 2020 alone.

The crux of public service delivery is that they are not just to be delivered but that they should be delivered at affordable cost to the common man in a predictable, reliable and customer centric manner.

A growing number of research and reports from notable organizations, authors and researchers underscores the merits of a good public service delivery systems.  We cite a few of them here as a testimony. A World Bank report on Argentina’s National Social Security Administration System in 2013 revealed that customer satisfaction rate rose from 45% to 86% when the organization reduced the cycle time for service delivery to its clients from 140 days to 74 days. The report further stated that Argentina’s National Pension Administration which manage and pay social security benefits for the country’s citizens was able to achieve this feat through “greater internal and external oversight”. Jackson (2020), writes that an efficient and effective public service delivery system aids the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).  A close look at the 17 UN SDGs will at once reveal public service delivery as the bedrock for achieving these goals. For Bhatnagar (2014), public service delivery is a gateway for providing good governance and making the impact of development felt by the citizens. Chatfield and Alanazi, (2013), found that high quality public service attract citizens’ loyalty.

Service Delivery and Public Productivity

The concept of public productivity as espoused by Henry (2010, p. 139), is “government’s improvement of efficiency and effectiveness in delivering its services, programs and policies”.  Henry describes efficiency “as the accomplishment of jobs using the fewest resources possible and effectiveness as the full production of the intended result”.  The author went further to state that public productivity is not just about service delivery; it is also about “public management”.  He cited an interesting feature of public productivity which differentiates it from manufacturing and other sectors largely dominated by the private sector.  It is that whereas it is possible to invest in technology which replace labour in the later and increase productivity, the public sector workers such as teachers are hands-on direct producers which cannot be replaced by technology.

Henry (2010), also noted that the quality of services delivered is “part and parcel of public productivity”. Poor quality can cost organizations as much as 30% in revenue or customer base (Main, 2007).  Therefore, organizations need to pay attention to quality.  Main (2007), describes Quality as “fitness for use”.  In an apparent reference to public productivity, he stated that quality can enhance the national economy when regulators and organizations choose to serve its entire population with standardized products and services in a systematic and disciplined manner, the objective of which is to produce what is good in the eyes of the consumer.  To achieve this, workers and regulators need to “examine everything they do and everything done around them to see whether it can be done better”.  This is the sort of symbiotic relationship and synergistic focus expected of SERVICOM and workers in public organizations.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

The theoretical framework for this paper is grounded on Douglas McGregor’s famous Theory X and Y which first appeared in the American Management Association’s journal, Management Review in November 1957 under the title, “The Human Side of Enterprise”. The theory had since been reproduced and commented on extensively by many authors.

The theory is based on the assumption that the work place has two set of people who equally require two set of contrasting principle to manage them.  McGregor labelled the principles X and Y. Theory X holds the viewpoint that some workers are naturally lazy and dislike work; and unless management push, control, monitor and compel them, they would not perform the tasks expected of them.  Theory Y on the other hand is based on the viewpoint that some workers have a natural liking for work just as they do for play and rest.  In addition, they possess the ability to manage themselves hence; they need not be pushed, controlled, monitored as would be done to their counterparts christened ‘X’.

Common rule of the thumb tells us that these two group of people are indeed found in the work place and both of them require supervision and control. McGregor himself admitted that it is the responsibility of management to actively organize the elements of a productive enterprise, the greatest of which is people.  He contended that the lazy workers must be punished while those who love work and do work need to be rewarded.  The question then becomes, how to identify the lazy workers with a view to sanction them and the hardworking and productive workers with a view to reward them.  It is through performance monitoring/evaluation.  Importantly, McGregor averred that workers performance need to be directed, motivated, controlled and modified to fit the needs of the organization (Natemeyer & Gilberg; 2011).

               The imperative of sanctions for poor performance, reward for hard work and modifying employee behaviours to fit the needs of the organization justifies the establishment of a third force in the place of work outside the staff and his supervisor/management.  This third force is generally regarded as inspectorate regimes.  That inspectorate regime in public institutions in Nigeria, specifically, the Akwa Ibom State University is SERVICOM. While the organizational need may vary, there is no doubt that ‘affordable, accessible, predictable and quality’ service is a critical need citizens require from public institutions in Nigeria, particularly the Akwa Ibom State University, which is the subject of this paper, SERVICOM was created to fill this gap.

               McGregor’s theory X and Y is especially relevant to this paper because of its practical revelation of the nature of men in the place of work and its insistence that management is responsible for organizing a productive enterprise.  In the opinion of the authors, a public enterprise cannot be said to be productive unless its services meet the criteria set out in this paper – affordability, accessibility, predictability, quantitative, qualitative, customer centric and above competition.  We argue that this SERVICOM is set up to facilitate the occurrence of these outcomes and should rise up to meet them.

METHODOLOGY:

The study used a survey research to investigate the effect of SERVICOM on Public Service Delivery in Nigeria with a special focus on Akwa Ibom State University as a public institution. To enhance the computation of results, the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) was used and the data analysed using the analysis of variance (ANOVA) technique.

All Hypotheses were tested

DATA PRESENTATION, DISCUSSIONS AND ANALYSIS

Table 4.1 Retrieval of the Questionnaire

Out of the 261 copies of questionnaire administered, 246 copies representing 94.25% of the administered copies of the questionnaire were retrieved. From the table, it can be seen that 95.38% and 95.13% of the questionnaire administered were retrieved for SERVICOM Awareness and SERVICOM monitoring respectively. This gives a response rate of 94.25%.

Table 4.2  Descriptive Statistics for the Research Variables

Results in Table 4.2 shows the descriptive statistics for the research variables which comprises of SERVICOM performance, SERVICOM awareness and SERVICOM monitoring. The mean for SERVICOM performance, SERVICOM awareness and SERVICOM monitoring respectively are 10.48, 3.46 and 23.11 with corresponding Standard Deviation of 1.23, 0.28 and 1.89 respectively. The results further show that both the SERVICOM awareness and staff performance are positively skewed. In general, the descriptive statistics shows there is need for greater levels of awareness of the functions of SERVICOM in AKSU.

4.3 Test of Hypothesis

Lack of awareness of SERVICOM services does not have a significant negative impact on staff services delivery.

Table 4.3.1:  Estimation of SERVICOM Awareness impact on AKSU Staff

Table 4.3.2: Analysis of Variance

The regression Equation is given by;

From the results in table 4.3.2, it can be seen that the P-Value is 0.312 which is far above the level of significant at 0.05 confidence interval. We can therefore reject the null hypothesis that lack of awareness of SERVICOM services does not have a significant negative impact on staff services delivery and accept the alternative hypothesis that lack of awareness of SERVICOM services have a significant impact on staff services delivery.

4.4 Test of Hypothesis

Lack of adequate service monitoring by SERVICOM does not have a significant negative impact on staff service delivery.

Table 4.4.1 Estimation of SERVICOM monitoring impact on AKSU Staff

Table 4.4.2: Analysis of Variance

The regression Equation is given by;

From the results in table 4.4.2, it can be seen that the P- Value is 0.628 which is far above the level of significant at 0.05 confidence interval. We can therefore reject the null that lack of adequate service monitoring by SERVICOM does not have a significant negative impact on staff service delivery and accept the alternative hypothesis that lack of adequate service monitoring by SERVICOM have a significant impact on staff service delivery.

DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS

Findings from the Literature Review:

The literature review of this study revealed that public service delivery is a sine qua non for governments towards ensuring public peace and order.   However, some government establishments have the tendency to still escape with low productivity and poor service delivery, because they are monopolies.  For example, citizens are stock with their government for the production of International Travel Passports, because they cannot get it from any other organization or a foreign country.  But escaping with poor quality services is not guaranteed for all government establishments; at least not the public universities.  As of August, 2022, Nigeria has 76 private universities (Abati, 2022), and more are coming up.  If public universities want to remain competitive, they need to be productive, they need to provide topnotch quality service, quality assurance and productivity monitoring units such as SERVICOM need to up their game. In the words of (Eneh, 2008), “productivity improvement requires attitudinal changes”.   This is one of the central purpose of SERVICOM – to create an attitudinal change that will stimulate high productivity in a qualitative, effective and efficient manner.

The researchers also found that there exist another inspectorate unit known as Quality Assurance in the University which was established in 2016.  The Unit is headed by a very senior lecturer who together with her work is very visible and influential.  Although they have streamlined their functions, SERVICOM appears to have taken the back seat, because Quality Assurance is doing the bulk of the job and there is no consequence on SERVICOM staff for not doing their job.  Interestingly, the Quality Assurance team do not have full staff whereas SERVICOM have dedicated full time staff.

Also, Vigoda-Gadot et al, (2015), states that costs can be reduced and staff productivity increased when staff make better use of the “workday”.  This underscores the necessity for monitoring and service agreement envisioned by the SERVICOM policy.

Discussion of Findings on the Hypothesis 

Hypothesis One: 

Hypothesis one states that “lack of awareness of SERVICOM services by AKSU staff does not have a significant negative impact on staff services delivery”.  To test the validity of this hypothesis, two specific questions were put forward to the respondents thus: “Have you ever heard of an awareness event organized by SERVICOM for staff of AKSU”?  227 respondents representing 92.28% of the total respondents of 246 answered “No”.  The second question sought to know if they have ever attended an awareness event organized by SERVICOM for staff of AKSU?  236 respondents representing 95.23% of the total respondents of 246 answered “No”.  In effect, 93.80% of the respondents were not aware of the services of SERVICOM.

In addition to the test questions for Hypothesis one, we also asked the respondents to Suggest what they think SERVICOM can do to improve AKSU staff performance.  Their responses were categorized into nine broad groups ranging from creation of awareness, provision of working tools, monitoring, relationship improvement, increase in number of monitoring personnel etc.  Respondents whose suggestions centred on creation of awareness represented 67%; and this was the largest.

The remaining eight categories shared the balance of 33%. Responses from SERVICOM Unit staff similarly suggested organization of seminars to create awareness of SERVICOM functions.

If over 90% of the respondents as indicated above have neither heard of nor attended an awareness seminar conducted by SERVICOM for AKSU staff, we can conclude they are now aware of the functions, roles and responsibilities of SERVICOM; hence 67% of them requested for creation of sensitization, awareness programmes and seminars.  If the staff are not aware of the services of SERVICOM, there is no gainsaying that they cannot draw from it and it will have a negative impact on staff service delivery as they are unable to draw from SERVICOM programmes due to lack of knowledge of their services. The researchers in the course of distributing the questionnaire also observed that posters of SERVICOM information were conspicuously absent in all the major buildings and offices of the institution unlike what is obtainable in other institutions across the country.

On the basis of the foregoing findings hypothesis one is rejected.

Hypothesis Two: 

For hypothesis two which stated that “lack of adequate service monitoring by SERVICOM does not have a significant negative impact on staff service delivery”, we asked the respondents three questions which sought to know whether they have ever been approached by SERVICOM staff to review their performance/service delivery; have ever heard of any event organized by SERVICOM to review staff performance/service delivery or have ever attended an event organized by SERVICOM to review staff performance/service delivery?  The aggregated responses to the three questions showed that 217 respondents representing 88.08% of the total respondents of 246 answered “No”. The data shows that SERVICOM has not been carrying out monitoring of AKSU staff service delivery as it ought to.

Apart from the AKSU staff, the researchers designed a separate questionnaire for staff of the SERVICOM Unit.  The questionnaire sought to know if they had documented “Service Charters or Service Improvement Plans and a Monitoring Programme as required under the SERVICOM policy. The response to the questions were negative.

The findings shows what Ramakrishnan (2013) observed that “providing services require interaction between the service provider and the client [customer].  SERVICOM in the University community have two clients – staff and students.  This research paper focused on staff. The study shows that there have not been frequent interaction between SERVICOM and the AKSU staff.

We note also that it is a global best practice by government to typically introduce a third party between service providers and service recipients to carry out monitoring, quality assurance and generally ensure that the weak customers have access to the right quantity and quality of service.  In the University community, the students are the weak customers.  SERVICOM was introduced to ensure they receive the right quantity and quality of service from the staff. SERVICOM was to do this by educating the students on their rights and privileges and offering itself as a customer complaints handling and solution provider on the one hand and on the other hand educate the staff on their roles and responsibilities towards meeting their customer (students) expectations by developing Customer Care Policy and Service Charters and monitoring staff service delivery.  SERVICOM was to do all these and raise the level of customer satisfaction by giving itself ‘wide publicity’.  All the data analysed in this study shows that SERVICOM in AKSU has not given itself and its activities the expected “wide publicity”.

CONCLUSIONS 

One of the cardinal principles of SERVICOM is to enhance the delivery of prompt and efficient services by public servants to Nigeria citizens.  Regrettably, SERVICOM in AKSU is not meeting up with this objective as over 90% of the staff have not received awareness on its services neither is SERVICOM providing the necessary monitoring and other required support to facilitate quantitative and qualitative service delivery to the students.  .

Absence of monitoring is a demotivation to all category of staff as there is nothing to measure and reward service delivery from the standpoint of the customer and the inspectorate division, in our case, SERVICOM.

SERVICOM is one of the most virtuous reforms in Nigeria’s recent history with a potential to revolutionize public service delivery and bring it at par with those of developed nations.  This paper serves a wake up call to the authorities in Akwa Ibom State University to revive and implement the policy to its fullest measure.

RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Awareness Campaign: SERVICOM should immediately commence massive awareness campaign in AKSU beginning with wide publication of posters in major buildings in the institutions as obtainable in other public institutions in Nigeria including Universities. This should be followed up with structured seminars for all categories of staff and the students of the University.
2. Measurement and Monitoring of SERVICOM Performance: Peter Drucker is quoted as saying that “what gets measured gets improved”. Therefore, we need a culture that measures service delivery including the service of the inspector as it would appear that nobody is measuring the performance of SERVICOM.  This recommendation is in line with Professor Ladipo Adamolekun’s assertion that if oversight institutions are weak and, therefore, not performing their oversight functions as needed, the consequence is poor service delivery by the responsible service provider.
3. Alignment of SERVICOM and Quality Assurance Units: There appear to be a thin line of difference between the functions of SERVICOM and Quality Assurance. From the interview conducted, most staff are more aware and in tune with the services of Quality Assurance.  The two units should be merged and christened Quality Assurance and SERVICOM and then, given a Director, while the two Units will now have sub-Directors similar to the Registry Unit with a Registrar and several Deputies heading the various Units.  This will ensure coordination and effectiveness.
4. Use of Technology: Introduce technology to service monitoring to aid the delivery of staff services in an effective, predictable, reliable and customer friendly manner. A good example will be the use of “electronic timecards” which will show staff starting time and completion of an activity or departure from work site.
5. Input Device for Performance Appraisal: SERVICOM should act as an independent body that provides honest feedback to management on staff service delivery which can be used to reward staff who meet up their service performance obligations and penalize those who perform below expectation.
6. Alignment with NUC Guidelines: The management of Akwa Ibom State University should align and implement its SERVICOM programme in line with the National Universities Commission (NUC) guidelines. This is the only way the institution can realize the noble objectives of SERVICOM.

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26. The World Bank (2013, October 11). Enhancing service delivery by improving efficiency, effectiveness, transparency and accountability. https://www.worldbank.org.
27. Vigoda-Gadot, E., Raadschelders, J.C.N, and Kisner, M (2015). Global dimensions of public administration & governance: A comparative voyage. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.