The public service is important and crucial for enhancing good governance. The
United Nations Public Administration Network (UNPAN) (2000) remarked that public
service functions as an administrative structure through which government carries out its
policy decisions and policy implementations. The standard of governance and its
outcomes in any government reflect the caliber of officials that constitute the
administrative force. A good and efficient administration is equally a responsive one; it
takes cognizance that purpose and obligation of government is to protect peoples’ rights
and promote their individual and collective well-being as human beings (UNPAN, 2000).
Good governance is conceptualized here to mean government capacity to discharge its
responsibilities in an effective, transparent, accountable, responsible, and just manner
(Hope, 2005).
Good governance in SSA, as in other corners of the world, hinges “on many
factors such as sound leadership, encouraging grassroots participation in the governing
process, accountability and transparency of government, among others” (UNPAN, 2000,
p. 37). Such sound leadership could only be guaranteed by men and women of moral
integrity who understand the importance and the role of ethics and practice in the
leadership process toward achievement of the common good. Morrell and Hartley (2006)
underscored the importance of ethics as a fundamental and crucial factor for effective
political leadership in local government.