Spatial Analysis of Employment Distribution in the Federal Civil Service, Nigeria

One of the problems confronting the Nigerian nation is unemployment and regional imbalance in employment has now become a pressing national issue. The aim of this study is to find out whether or not the current pattern of employment in the federal civil Service reflects the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria. Secondary data on the number of persons employed in the Federal Civil Service from 2008-2012 were collected from the Federal Character Commission. Rank order technique, standard scores, frequency distribution and simple percentages were used for analyses. The Rank order technique was used to derive the standard deviates and the standard scores (Z) aggregate for each state and year were used to derive a composite score for indexing the position of that state and region in the employment distribution. The results of the analyses showed that the southeastern (20.60) and south-western(17.76) geopolitical zones were privileged to have more employees in the senior cadre placement, while the south-southern(-5.78), north-central(-16.31), north-eastern(-1.43) and north-western(-14.8) geopolitical zones were under-privileged or deprived. The most privileged geopolitical zone was south-eastern, while north-central geopolitical zone was the most underprivileged in the distribution of senior cadre officers in the Federal Civil Service. The North-Central zone was more represented in the lower cadre and South-south was at the middle lower cadre. The North-east and South-east had the lowest employees in the low cadre employee distribution in the Federal Civil Service. The employment distribution therefore shows that employees from the geopolitical zones in the Southern part of Nigeria are more represented in the Federal Civil Service and dominate the senior cadre compared to their Northern counterparts, reflecting existing inequality. The study recommended that the quota system should be applied more appropriately in order to correct the existing imbalance.