CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1.1 BACKGROUNG OF THE STUDY

Motivation is defined in general terms as the act or process of providing power from within the person which insights him into action as termed from Weber’s third international dictionary (2011). Motivation is also defined as the process of stimulating the interest of somebody to do something.

Manager involves the creation and maintenance of environment for the performance of individuals working together in group towards the accomplishment of common objectives. Since the manager cannot do their job alone, he ought to know what motivates the people. So it is the duty of the manager to recognize motivating factors in designing an environment for performance.

It can be referred to the way urges, aspirations, drives and needs at humans direct or control or explain their behaviour. The public service in Nigeria traces its roots to British colonial administration. At the time of independence there was no major change in the structures of the service. Replacing the departing expatriates with the indigenous Nigerians under a policy referred to as Nigerianization. Over the years the public service has continued to render poor quality services to the people due to poor work performance by the employees. The source of the problems of poor work performance and service delivery in the public sector, began at the time of independence in 1960, and emanated particularly from Nigerianization policy (1999) (DPM, 2002). Ajulor (2002).

The main policy resulted in creation of direct employment of Nigerians, which eventually led to rapid expansion of the civil service and a high wage bill. Over the years the government has not been able to offer competitive remuneration to its employees because of this high wage bill. Although the cost of living continues to rise, the remuneration of the public sector workers has stagnated. To cope with the increasing cost of living, the public servants engage themselves in other economic activities to supplement their income. Most of the economic activities are undertaken during official working hours, leading to poor service delivery in the public sector (Aseka, 2002)

To curb the problems, in 1993 the government introduced reform programmes aimed at improving work performance and service delivery in the public sector. The first phase of the reform programme focused on staff reduction. During this phase the size of the civil service was significantly reduced by 37% through the following measures:

• Voluntary Early Retirement Scheme (VERS);

• Abolition of posts that had remained vacant for too long;

• Freezing of recruitment into the public service except in critical areas;

• Withdrawal of guaranteed employment to pre-trainees and graduates of tertiary educational institutions;

• Removal of 4500 “ghost” workers from the payroll as result of head count exercise;

• Strict enforcement of the mandatory retirement age of 55 years

The second phase of the reform programme focused on rationalization of the civil service to improve performance and productivity. During this phase the government introduced performance management strategies to enhance work performance in the public service. The strategies focused on improving service delivery in ministries/departments and creating a customer and results-oriented culture in the public service.

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