WHILE findings unveiled last week on the state of the citizenry’s accessing of public services was stark enough, it is hard to say if Accra-based pan-university survey outfit Afrobarometer had an inkling of what to do about it.

The findings indicated that many Africans face significant challenges striving to access public services, including healthcare, education, identification documents and police assistance, with a high level of disrespect encountered in these interactions.

It is the latter aspect that caught a breadth of imagination as a routine failing in state corridor attitudes.

The report, circulated online, highlighted findings on surveyed experiences of Africans who sought services over the past year, with the data drawn from 39 countries.

The theme of disrespectful treatment by public service providers kept coming up in whatever cohort the survey was conducted, but it is the institute’s reaction that leaves much to be desired.

It says that the data paint a grim picture, where anything between one-third and two-thirds of people seeking public services are treated with vivid disrespect and look like beggars.

Those reporting such treatment include up to 58 per cent of respondents who interacted with public healthcare facilities, 34 per cent engaged with public schools and 33 per cent seeking identification documents from government agencies.

Going by the survey, over 40 per cent of people also sought assistance from the police and encountered the same situation such that the report affirms that police officers rarely, if ever, operated professionally or respected citizens’ rights.

It was simply not the sort of attitude for which the police were trained to do, but systems change people.

Police officers aren’t trained to take bribes while at work, but once hired some absorb what they find around them and know when it is perfectly safe to take a bribe, not to say to extort random payments for whatever cause.

Still, this picture as generalised for African countries although there are genuine variations of civil service breakdown and arrogance in the delivery of social services, is what Africans can show to the world more than 60 years since independence!

The signs started showing early, but at that time just as it is today, no one will admit that independence sowed decline.

A cartoonist in a regional newspaper came up with a satiric image of East African Community summit participants united by the common policy of abductions after a Ugandan opposition leader was abducted in Kenya when attending a book launch.

This newly found penchant for ways to handle criticism has been spreading not exactly like wildfire, but it is hard to find countries where low levels of violence against dissidents aren’t conducted with benign lack of concern at upper levels of state organs.

What Afrobarometer did not do was to figure out why this is the case and what ought to be done to roll it back.

To take the rather cynical cartoon insinuation a bit further, it is possible to say that African states are capable of avoiding a Haiti-style type syndrome in the future, as many of them grew out of life presidencies or family rule.

Meanwhile, capital is flowing more steadily into Africa than it did in the case of Haiti, though there are dangers of an exploding urban population having little do to, being drawn into gangs for survival, decimating the social fabric and public order.

While we still have time, we perhaps need an Asian-type massive transition from the traditional communal land holding system plus hundreds of state firms that need to be profoundly altered to absorb capital and modernise.

Otherwise, we may find ourselves compelled to recall fears by classic US black writer James Baldwin about ‘the fire next time’.