The Use and Misuse of Power and Politics in the Nigerian Public Service

Abstract

Power may be defined as the ability or the right to be able to control people or things; the art of influencing and/or having control over other people in an organization and the flow of the available energy and resources towards certain goals as opposed to other goals. When people get together in groups, power must be applied therefore when employees in organizations convert their power into action, they are described as being engaged in politics. The effect of power in modern organizations depends on whether an employee uses the positive or negative type of power to control other employees. The aim of this paper is to examine the use and misuse of power and politics in the Nigerian public service. The specific objective is to understand how power and politics are being used and misused in organizations, identify the causes for the use and misuse of power and politics and to determine the impact of the use and misuse of power and politics on employees and the organization. The method of data collection was secondary sources using existing literature on the topic of discourse; content analysis techniques were used to analyze and present data. Findings from this study suggest that organizations can easily be turned into avenue for political games or power struggles since individuals who work in the Nigerian public service have ambitions to achieve goals for their personal benefits rather than that of the organization.

Keywords

• The Nigerian Public Service
• Misuse
• Power
• Use
• Political Games
• Politics

Project Number

Nil

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