Organised Labour has given the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, up to Wednesday May 1, to inaugurate the board of the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust, NSITF, with Chief Frank Ovie Kokori, as chairman, or face its wrath.
Labour also warned Ngige against the dropping of the name of President Muhammadu Buhari in the substitution of Chief Frank Kokori as chairman of the board and accused the Minister of employing delayed tactics, while remaining the ‘sole administrator’ of the Fund.
Efforts to reach the minister last night for his reaction proved abortive, as he was said to be in the church and could, therefore, not react.
But Labour in a statement yesterday by Ayuba Wabba, President of Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, accused Ngige of turning NSITF into personal estate, perpetrating several illegalities, including unapproved recruitment.
It equally accused Ngige of not only being economical with the truth, but also lying to remain sole administrator of NSITF, warning that after May Day, if Ngige failed to inaugurate the board with Kokori as chairman of the board, labour would made public some of the infractions of the minister at NSITF.
Recall that Senator Ngige had in a statement on April 17, announced that the board of NSITF was to be inaugurated on April 18 but the inauguration could not hold as organized labour mobilized its members to protest the replacement of Chief Kokori as the Funds Board chairman.
But the Ministry of Labour and Employment in a statement, claimed that the inauguration was postponed due to the invasion of the venue (Conference Hall, Ministry of Labour at the Federal Secretariat) by labour leaders and suspected hired thugs.
However, the NLC in a four- page statement decried the statement by the ministry calling labour leaders that attended the botched inauguration thugs.
NLC stated: “The statement, which was filled with many unbelievable barefaced lies and uncouth language, alleged, among other things, that the inauguration had to be postponed …to avoid the degeneration of the situation where thugs were already manhandling some officers of the ministry and policemen attached to the office of the minister.
“The Minister’s statement asserted that the violent gate crashing and the illegal forceful seizure of the conference room of the Honourable Minister by thugs numbering hundreds and persons who clearly had no business with the inauguration of the board is totally unacceptable.”
Wabba accused Ngige of several infractions at NSITF, saying “unknown to the Presidency, the Minister had within this period that he was the sole manager of NSITF, recruited hundreds of people, majority of whom are from his community.
”He has also been in the habit of forcing the approval of hundreds of millions of Naira for induction trainings, procurement and monetisation of jeeps for himself and the Minister of State in the Ministry, among other spurious expenditure.
“Recently, Dr Ngige again lied on Channels Television Live Programme that we made a recommendation for someone to be chairman of the Board. This is falsehood of the highest order! Chief Frank Kokori got his nomination to Chair the Board of NSITF as a chieftain of the ruling party in Delta State and on his own right as a distinguished and forthright elder statesman.
”Understandably, we believe that Ngige is against Kokori as Chairman of NSITF Board because of his well-known trademark personality as a transparent, fearless but virtuous person.
“As a responsible working-class organisation that values the tenets of social dialogue and tripartitism, we had pursued this issue tenaciously for the last three years with relevant authorities without externalising it, despite all our frustrations.
”Our experience as an organisation has shown that it pays to maintain cordiality and good rapport with other social partners, especially the Ministry of Labour which by the nature of our institution, we have to necessarily relate with on a day-to-day basis. The Minister had obviously misread this as weakness.
“Calling the top most hierarchy of NLC ‘thugs and hooligans’ is to say the least most irresponsible. It is worst (and most disrespectful) calling one of our most revered veterans a ‘thug and hooligan’.
”Without the painstaking sacrifice of our movement, led by the Kokoris of the world, there would be no democracy under which an Ngige would aspire to be a governor of a state, a senator of the Federal Republic, or the minister that he is.
”Going forward, the dropping of the name of Mr President notwithstanding, we expect Ngige to inaugurate the Board of NSITF under the chairmanship of Chief Frank Ovie Kokori before 2019 May Day.”
