Reward System in the Nigerian Political and Public Sector: The Call for a Paradigm Shift in the 21st Century

Abstract

Reward system defined in terms of remunerations, salaries, wages, allowances, and fringe benefits constitute a dominant feature of political and public institutions in developed and developing countries. Nigeria as a social formation operates a reward system where civil servants and political office holders are remunerated through salaries, fringe benefits and allowances for performing legislative, executive and administrative functions. This paper is an attempt at examining political and other public servants salaries and allowances within the backdrop of its implications on human resource management, productivity and sustainable development of the country. The paper argues that because reward systems are highly skewed in favor of the political class in comparison to salaries and allowances in other sectors of the economy, Nigerian politicians have turned democratic elections into investment areas and opportunities and battle fields where money, private armies and thugs are employed to create enabling environments that guarantee returns on investments and accelerated access to primitive accumulation of wealth. Given the inequality in the Nigerian reward system between the political and other classes in the country, the paper argues that a paradigm shift aimed at the restructuralization of the reward system and the fight against corruption are inevitable for human capital development, productivity enhancement and sustainable development of the country in the 21st century