Recruitment Policies and Politics in the Local Government Administration: Implication for the Achievement of Universal Basic Education as a Sustainable Development Goal in Nigeria

The abysmal performance in Nigeria’s public service today, particularly inthe teaching profession at primary education level is largely traceable to politicization of recruitment and selection of staff devoid of merit-based as against the background of weberian principles. The paper X-rayed the negative implication of the scenario towards achieving universal basic education for sustainable development goal agenda. The methodology adopted for this paper is secondary source of data and also applied the Marx-weber bureaucratic theory to underpin the general role of human resources in the actualization of prescribed organizational goal. The study revealed that primary education is critical and powerful driver for realizing all the development goals as the first stage of compulsory education upon which other level of education is built. Hence, recruitment of teachers must be merit-based with less political influence, patronage in the form of federal character or quota religion and ethnicity. It also recommended that hiring employ should not only be based on skills of the applicant but positive altitude to maintain workplace morale that will improves overall performance in the public service at large.