THE IMPERATIVE OF “AFTER ACTION REVIEW” AS A MECHANISM FOR ENHANCING PUBLIC SERVICE PERFORMANCE AND EFFICIENCY IN NIGERIA

In contemporary societies, delivering and maintaining public goods and services involves increased costs. As a result, questions about the performance and effectiveness of the public sector are discussed more and more often. Today, public sectors in African countries are facing challenges of improving performance and efficiency service delivery. Nigerian public sector seems not to be exempted from these maladies because the performance of Nigerian public sector has fallen short of expectations regarding the provision of services and has with inefficiency in delivering essential services. As a result, the need for public service to improve performance and efficiency in the public sector is becoming ever greater. The article discusses the usefulness of After Action Review (AAR) as a veritable tool in improving performance and effectiveness in the public sector. This article relies on secondary sources of data collection gathered through a broad review of relevant literature on the subject through books, journals, internet materials, newspaper articles, official archives and so on. The article argues that improving the performance of the public sector must take into account the efficiency, effectiveness, financial performance, and quality of service. Since it has been difficult to build a single model that would measure the performance of public organisations, the article advocates for the implementation of After Action Review as a mechanism for enhancing public service performance and efficiency in service delivery in Nigeria. It notes that AAR is a method that uses a review of experience to avoid recurrent mistakes and reproduce success. It can be used to improve responses, improve policy and procedures, and most importantly prevent the same errors from being repeated time and time again. The article believes that AAR is a powerful tool because it produces quick results in a short period and can be applied to a broad range of activities. It reveals that notwithstanding the misgivings, AAR is considered a good idea as it gives the state actors/public servants opportunity to review the mission of the organisation, what went well? What could have gone better? What might have done differently? Moreover, who needs to know more to improve performance?. The article, therefore, concludes that After Action Review is a useful mechanism for assessing performance in public sector organisation, its application in Nigerian public service, therefore, will improve performance and efficient service delivery. It recommends some measures for the successful implementation of AAR to achieve adequate performance and efficiency in public-sector management and the provision of services in the Nigerian public service in particular and Africa as a whole. been identified&nbsp

Improved Internally Generated Revenue and Sustainable Budget Implementation: A Comparative Study of Lagos and Oyo States

Internally generated revenue is one of the ways through which Nigeria, particularly the State governments can be assisted to overcome their constraints in budget implementation and ensure adequate and responsible public service delivery. Yet, despite itsimportance, many states, but Lagos, are still not taking the advantage to improve on their Internally Generated Revenue (IGR). By way of comparative study and to fill the gap on the need to improve IGR for better budget performance, this paper examined the impact of IGR on sustainable budget implementation in Lagos and Oyo States. Using data on specific categories of IGR and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the selected states and applying ex-post facto analysis, the study assesses whether IGR has any significant impact on sustainable budget implementation. The findings of this study reveals that the persistent shortfall in estimates of earnings has inevitably affected the sustainability of budget implementation at both federal and state levels in Nigeria. It further shows that there is a direct relationship between improved IGR and sustainable budget implementation. In view of the above, the study concludes that state governments could achieve sustainable budget implementation through improved IGR; and therefore recommends that there should be a purposeful attitudinal change towards improving IGR at State level in Nigeria as this is evidently seen in the case of Lagos. Therefore, given the Nigerian government current fiscal position improving IGR is no longer an option among many; it is currently the only one on top