Literally the word, ‘Permanent’ means  forever. And in the case of ‘Permanent Secretary’, it stands for ‘Secretary for Ever’, which is not the case. The Permanent Secretary remains so only when he/she is in office, but becomes a former Permanent Secretary when out of office. How can something permanent be a former, when it is supposed to be forever?

In Hausa language, which is the unofficial Lingua Franca of more than half of the people of Nigeria, as in English language, the word ‘permanent’ denotes ‘forever’. But do the Permanent Secretaries remain on their seat forever?

A retired friend of mine recently called me on ‘phone and I addressed him with his former designation of ‘permanent secretary’. But I only said ‘PS, the way I addressed him when he became a permanent secretary in the state civil service. Before then I used to call him by his first name prefixed by Alhaji. He however, told me that as he had retired from the service, he was not a permanent secretary anymore. He added that the designation was his successor’s, since he was not going to remain the permanent secretary ‘forever’.

He however, jokingly added that he was now a ‘permanent secretary’ at his house, with the wife as the Commissioner, noting that the ‘her indoors’, as the Irish people call a wife, would have preferred that the husband retired from the Federal Government service, so that she would be called a minister rather than an ‘ordinary’ commissioner.

The friend stated what happened in most houses of retirees, who now spend more time at home to the not totally liking of the wife, who was otherwise, the shots caller. But the regular presence of the retiree husband at home has somewhat reduced her in estimation in the eyes of her children and friends, as the person whose words are final. But the strong (some husbands might even call them domineering) ones still consider themselves as the leaders of the house, hence the designation of commissioner or minister, as the case may be.

His statement corresponded with what another friend once told me. According to him, one day he went to his house unexpectedly and met his wife boasting to her friends that she was the ‘boss’ of the house, who must be consulted before anything is done there. She was standing before a pot he mistakenly forgot on the burner. But when he found them standing around the burner with the the wife boasting, he kicked the pot from the burner and went into his room as if nothing had happened, finished what he went to do and left without offering any explanation for his action.

Over the ages a large part of the world has  ‘erroneously’ refer to the most senior Secretary in a ministry as ‘Permanent’, whereas the officer is only permanent when in office. Otherwise, even the dead body of the Permanent Secretary should be on the seat his living self once occupied.

But the nomenclature of the official one step below the so called permanent secretary is what one might say is an apt designation, even though both the two designations are hangovers from the colonial era. 

Although England colonised and ruled Nigeria, it is no longer a tenable or good enough reason to still hang on to what is clearly not the truth and continue applying it as if it were the truth, which has no alternative.

In our clime, where service is mostly to our self rather than the country, the archaic designation ‘Permanent’ automatically gives the bearer of the title what is seen as ‘God given’ right to dip their hands in the public till all the time they so wish, as if it was for them to do as they wish.

With the civilians now in charge, the responsibility is on the head of the commissioners at the state level, and the ministers at the national level, with the permanent secretary still the accounting officer of the ministry.

Therefore, the earlier we changed the designation to Special Secretary, the better for our often stated claim of being independent from colonialism, whereas some of the colonialists’s outdated culture is still being retained in our  ‘apparently’ static society, as current.

And her or them indoors would now come to be referred to as, special secretary/special secretaries, NOT permanent secretary/permanent secretaries, as is the case at the moment.

May God always give us the patience to bear with our hers or them indoors, and the children.

Malam Malumfashi wrote from Katsina.