EFFECT OF STRATEGIC PLANNING ON PRODUCTIVITY IN THE NIGERIAN PUBLIC SERVICE (A STUDY OF THE NIGERIAN CUSTOMS SERVICE)

Abstract

The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) falls under the paramilitary Nigeria public service sector. And it has major roles to play. They include collecting revenue for the government, exercising security functions, combating smuggling, and enforcing the trade policy. However, inefficiency has been a major attachment with the public custom service of Nigeria. And this raised certain research questions over the years. With respect to this, hypothesis have risen that the reason for low productivity is the absence of clearly defined goals and other strategic planning determinants. In this study, the effect of strategic planning on the low productivity of the NCS in Lagos State was examined, and to achieve such goal, the level of awareness of workers regarding the performance level of the NCS was accessed. Also, the underlying practices responsible for thelow productivity was determined using three parameters; level of motivation, personal attitude to work and the influence of the government. Finally, the extent to which strategic planning affected the productivity was determined using five determinants namely clear goals and objectives, accuracy, efficiency, quality and change in management. The population of this study was a total of 2,540 (two thousand, five hundred and forty)in the Nigerian Custom Service, however, a total of 367 (three hundred and sixty-seven) wasinclose proximity to the researcher in Lagos state. And with a sampling size of 191 (gotten by using the Slovin's formula under stratified random sampling), a set of questionnaires were distributed throughout the six cadres of the NCS, Lagos State (Finance Administration and Technical Service, Tarrif and Trade, Enforcement, Investigation and Inspection, Strategic Research and Policy, Human Resource and Development, Excise, FTZ and Industrial Incentives). The method of analysis adopted for the study was the use of frequency tables and percentages to check the level of awareness of workers regarding the performance level of the NCS as well as to access each variable mentioned as a factor responsible for the lowproductivity. The same principle was adopted to investigate the extent to which strategic planning affectsitsproductivity while multiple regression analysis at 0.05% significance level was used to showtheeffect of each strategic planning variable on the productivity of the service. From the analysis of the study, though many of them were aware that somethingneedstobe done concerning the performance level of the NCS, they are unaware of what theystandtogain from a better performance nor do they believe that they one of the factors responsible for itscurrent productivity level. Also, workers' level of motivation as a factor responsible for low productivity in the NCS was slightly low, their personal attitude to work as a factor was non-evident (although the result could be highly biased, according to the researcher's perception and experience during data collection), and the influence of the government as a factor was extremely evident, and could stand as the driving force for the service’s low productivity. Finally, regarding the extent to which strategic planning has been adopted by the NCS, clear goals and objectives were not set, the service lacked efficiency, faired averagely with regards to quality and accuracy and diid not effectively adopt a productive change in management. Overall, it was evident that the lack of strategic planning contributed to the low performance of the NCS. And from the regression analysis, it was shown specifically that there is a significant joint influence of all the variables of strategic planning on productivity (F(5,180)=9.712,p<.05,R2=.212). Also, it was observed that there was significant positive independent influence of clear objectives (B=1.011, t=6.094, p<.05) on the productivity of Lagos state NCS.