The Public Service Review Commission was constituted by General Yakubu Gowon in September 1972 and chaired by Chief Jerome Udoji, a former Eastern Region Secretary to the Premier and one of Nigeria's most experienced public administrators. Its members included Allison Ayida (Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Finance), Adebayo Adedeji (later UN Under-Secretary-General), Tom Imobighe, and Allison Akene Ayida. The Commission's mandate — the widest ever given to a Nigerian public service review — covered the federal civil service, the twelve state civil services, the universities, the statutory corporations, the judiciary and the armed forces.
The Udoji Report was submitted in September 1974. Its central conceptual move was to recast the civil service as a managerial rather than purely administrative institution, modelled on the British Fulton Report (1968) and the McKinsey "management by objectives" school. Its core recommendations:
(i) Unified Grading System — the abolition of the colonial three-tier division (administrative / executive / clerical) and its replacement with a single Grade Level structure (GL 01 to GL 17) covering every public servant from messenger to Permanent Secretary. This structure remains in force today.
(ii) Open Reporting & Open Appraisal — performance evaluation by written objectives rather than confidential reports.
(iii) "New Style" public servant — managerial training through the new Administrative Staff College of Nigeria (ASCON), which the Commission's report midwifed (established by Decree in 1973, sited at Topo, Badagry).
(iv) The Udoji Award — a salary increase averaging 100% across the public service with arrears backdated to 1 April 1974. The award, paid out in January–February 1975, injected an unprecedented volume of liquidity into the economy at the height of the oil boom and is widely credited with triggering the 1974–75 inflation that fed into the discontent preceding the 29 July 1975 coup.
The structural legacy of Udoji — the unified Grade Level system, ASCON, and the principle of periodic comprehensive wages review — is the single most enduring framework of the Nigerian public service. The political legacy of the award contributed directly to the fall of the Gowon regime.