The war of words raging between the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Adam Oshiomhole, and the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr.
Chris Ngige, over non-inauguration of statutory board members.
In this report, BODE OLAGOKE and MOSES JOHN unearth the real reasons for the bric-a-brac.
Comrade Oshiomhole’s threat to sack Ngige as minister has continued to draw reactions from informed Nigerians, with some political analysts asking if Oshiomhole, as the National Chairman of the governing party, to which the minister also belongs, has power to carry out his sack threat.
The issue The leadership of the governing APC, at its last NEC and caucus meetings, had directed that all the Ministers should, as a matter of urgency, inaugurate all the Boards under their ministries as appointed by the President, almost two and half years after the party took over.
While some ministers have complied with the directive, one of the boards that are yet to be inaugurated is the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF).
Reason for Oshiomhole’s threat Due to outcry over the delay in inaugurating the board, Comrade Oshiomhole sent a letter directing both Minister of Labour and Employment and his counterpart in Aviation to do the needful.
Oshiomhole had earlier urged President Muhammad Buhari to sack all the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) suspected members still serving in the federal government agencies.
In a letter addressed to the Ministers, dated July 11, 2018, the APC chairman lamented that the Ministers have failed to reconstitute the Boards which according to him contravened the position of the National Executive Council and the Presidential directives to all Ministers, describing it as “a great disrespect” to the party.
The letter read in part: “This is to inform you that the attention of the National Working Committee has been drawn to your refusal to inaugurate members of the re-constituted Boards under the supervision of your Ministry.
“This contravenes the position of the NEC, National Caucus and the Presidential Directives to all Ministers to inaugurate Boards of Parastatal under their Ministries.
We find this attitude as disrespect to the President and disservice to our great party.
“The party will, henceforth, no longer tolerate any appointee of government at all level who continue to willfully disregard lawful instructions from either the government or the party.
“In the light of the forging, you are hereby directed to inaugurate all the boards under your Ministry within one week, failure of which the party will take appropriate disciplinary measures against you.” The bric-a-brac For the Minister of Labour and Employment, the APC National Chairman’s threat was an empty threat.
Ngige explained that the inauguration of the Board of the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust (NSITF) was delayed to allowed investigations into the finances of the Fund to be carried out, and gave the assurance that the new board “will be put in place before the end of July, 2018.” In a letter addressed to Oshiomhole, dated July 17, 2018, the Minister said he sought and got a presidential directive to suspend the inauguration of the board in view of the fraud that was uncovered at the fund and the need to carry out administrative investigations into the finances of the fund.
Ngige’s letter read in part: “Greetings and once more congratulations on your recent unanimous election as the National Chairman of our great Party in our recently concluded National Convention.
“Our National Chairman, I am in receipt of a letter referenced APC/NHDQ/GEN-S/28/018/003 dated July 11, 2018, which was sent from your office and received by me on July 12, 2018.
“Ordinarily, I would not believe the letter was from you except for the barrage of media statements that came before I saw the letter.
I read the contents of this letter with both amazement and utter disbelief.
“Firstly, it is not true that I did refuse/neglect to inaugurate members of the re-constituted Boards of Parastatal and Agencies under the supervision of my Ministry as alleged in your letter.
“The Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment has four parastatal namely – The Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF), National Directorate of Employment (NDE), National Productivity Centre (NPC), and Michael Imoudu Institute for Labour Studies (MINILS).
“Boards of the latter three agencies have been re-constituted and members were inaugurated on March 8, 2018, in conformity with a Presidential directive.
All the three Boards are currently operational.
“The only Agency left out was the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) which before the directive, had been enmeshed with major issues of corruption involving about N48 billion, comprising Federal Government and Employers’ contributions to the Employees’ Compensation Fund plus some non-remitted PAYE taxes, which were carted away through well perfected sleaze operation.
“This resulted in the Agency coming under the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) investigation/prosecution of members of the former Board and some of her serving Officials.
“An Administrative and Financial Panel of Enquiry was instituted with a Presidential approval as a follow – up to the criminal investigations.
This was followed by a House of Representatives Committee on Labour and Employment probe in March 2018 which is still ongoing.
“Comrade National Chairman, you are aware of this situation and you had broached this issue with me during your campaign period when I visited your Campaign Office, Due to the fact that a lot of the information available to me as the Minister are classified, I had told you that I will brief you latter and at our last meeting during a function on Saturday, July 7, 2018, I had sought an appointment for the next day so I could brief you on the situation.
“I am not oblivious of the fact that you are a very interested Party in the matter because having served as Chairman of the NSITF Board before the last Board and as a former Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) President, you would be interested in the tripartite colouration of the Board being maintained more so as Labour still remains your base constituency.
“Mr.
Chairman, a lot of the classified information from the EFCC, the Auditor General of the Federation’s “spot check” report for an organisation with an account that has not been audited for five years (2013 – 2017), is not within your purview.
In view of all these damaging reports, I had a Presidential permission not to inaugurate this particular Board at the time we did the others.
“However, I wish to assure you that the Administrative and Financial Panel of Enquiry has just concluded its work and presented her Report today.
The Board will be in place very soon in order to assist the implementation Committee that is being put in place by the Ministry to effect the various policy recommendations that are aimed at sanitising the Agency and strengthening the very weak Internal Audit System that allowed N5 billion to be taken out of this organisation in one single day without voucher(s).
“I am sorry that I will be unable to accede to your “directives” to inaugurate all the Boards within one week as the Ministry had already inaugurated the aforementioned three Boards, but will in this case of the NSITF adhere to the “work plan” on the NSITF as approved by Mr.
President who is the Head of the Government of the Federation.
Based on this, be assured that the Board of NSITF will be constituted very soon, at most, before the end of July 2018.” Flash back In February, this year, the federal government inaugurated a nine-man administrative panel of enquiry into the finances of the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) alleging that no accounting audit report and returns had been done in the organisation since 2013 in blatant breach of the Act establishing the fund.
Minister of Labour and Employment who constituted the panel to look into the financial state of Board said it was to purging it of all negative trails of the last board and management.
Ngige promptly announced a compulsory 30-day leave in the first instance for six top staff of the Fund, including the General Manager, Legal, Adebayo Aderibigbe; Deputy General Manager, Finance, Henry Ekhasomi; General Manager, Social Security, Ishmael Agaka; DGM, Internal Audit, Zwalda Ponkap; GM, Information, Catherine Ugbe, and GM, Compensation, Dr.
Kelly Nwagha.
“On assumption of duty in November 2015, I requested for the audit report to enable my office render same in my annual report to the President, as required by Section 30 of the NSITF Act, CAP.
N88, Laws of the Federation, 2004, but no feedback was given on the matter in 2015, 2016, and even 2017.
All efforts made in this direction were frustrated.
“In 2017, I specifically requested the AuditorGeneral of the Federation to conclude periodic audit check as required by Section 85(4) of the Constitution.
This yielded no result as the officials of NSITF gave no cooperation to the federal government auditors,” Ngige said.
Probe panel report According to Ngige, “the chairman of the administrative panel which probed the N6.2 billion scam at NSITF, in his report, revealed that there were irregular allowances totalling N5.7 billion paid to staff and management.
“These allowances were paid without the approval of the National Salary, Incomes and Wages Commission.
Some of the allowances were Management Staff Allowance, Staff Education Allowance, DSTV Subscription Allowance, and Dressing Allowance.
“The others were generator and motor vehicle fuelling allowance which were not provided for in the Condition of Service of the Fund.” He said the panel observed that between 2013 and 2017, the internal Audit Department of the NSITF did not audit the cashbooks of the various bank accounts at the headquarters.
The chairman also explained that the lack of effective auditing of the Fund’s accounts and records violates Section 1701 of the Financial Regulations.
“There were several transfers of funds in bank accounts without authorisation and approvals.
The sum of N15, 737,757,697.91 was transferred from one account to another.
“Evidences to show the approvals and payment vouchers authorising the transfers were not presented to the panel.
The panel observed that N2.9 billion was expended on computerisation and other related lCT equipment.
Despite this expenditure, not much was achieved on computerisation of the Fund, defeating the purpose of the expenditure,” he said.
He, however, added that the sum of N2, 650,731,225.
93 was deducted from various payments.
He noted that this was in respect of Withholding Tax, Pay-As-You-Earn (PAVE), Value Added Tax, Pension and National Housing Fund, which were not remitted to the relevant authorities.
ULC disagrees with Ngige The United Labour Congress (ULC), through its General Secretary, Didid Adodo, said though it was commendable to unearth corruption and mismanagement of funds, especially workers’ funds, the minister should go further to name the culprits.
It, in a statement, said: “We disagree with the Minister and we want to state categorically that no Labour representative was found culpable.
They were neither indicted by the EFCC nor by the subsequent administrative panel.
It is, therefore, a gross misrepresentation of facts or outright mischief for the handlers of the Minister to have made that generalisation which attempted to implicate innocent Labour representatives in the alleged fraud even when they knew nothing about it.
“We challenge the Minister to publish names of individuals he said were indicted by that report.
This is the only way to avoid unnecessary insinuations even when court records are there for any member of the public interested in the matter to find out who has been indicted or not.
The Minister ought to remember that EFCC’s investigations did not indict some individuals on the Board.
We are also not unmindful of the implications of setting up an administrative panel in a matter already investigated by the EFCC which to us is a clear indictment of the EFCC.
Was the Minister passing a vote of no confidence? “We are, therefore, aghast that despite the bill of innocence given to Labour representatives, the Minister still went ahead to make that allusion.
ULC does not want to be drawn unnecessarily into the politics of NSITF as we want to distance ourselves from its activities as it concerns board appointment shenanigans.
We would not want however to be bandied together with whatsoever individuals that may have been found culpable by the different investigations.” Fani-Kayode mocks Ngige, Oshiomhole Reacting to the rift, a former Minister of Aviation, Fani-Kayode thanked God, saying “they have turned the swords against each other.” “They turn their swords against one another and scatter their own ranks.
The Lord honoured His word,” he said.
Political analysts speak While some believed the APC National chairman has gone overboard and overreached himself following the threat to suspend the minister, others noted that the attitude of Oshiomhole is a welcome development in the nation’s democracy.
A lecturer in Political science from the University of Abuja, Dr.
Olaniyi Adewale, opined that the action by the APC national chairman is a political revolution which must be welcome by lovers of democracy.
Adewale emphasised the supremacy of the party over any of its members, claiming that the party can knock anybody back to line because they are products of the party, irrespective of their positions.
He added that Oshiomole needed to send a strong signal to political holders representing the party so as to bring discipline to governance.
“Both ways, the party is supreme and anybody can be knocked back to line because he is a product of the party whether as minister or legislators, and the party provided the platform for election or appointment.
In Nigeria, there is yet no independent candidacy.
“Though elections bring in political actors, both the legislative and executive must work in concert to implement the party’s programmes and policies; so, if Ngige or anyone falls short of it, he can be disciplined through suspension or expulsion by the party.
“Before Oshiomhole became the party chairman, there was palpable indiscipline and insubordination which Oyegun and PMB condoned and Oshiomhole needed to send a strong signal that enough is enough,” he said.
However, a political activist, Nurudeen Muhammed, lashed out at the National chairman, describing his action as “lack of understanding of the party’s constitutional provisions.” Mohammed said Oshiomhole went overboard and over reached himself by advising Ngige on board appointments.
He added that the party chairman should have liaised with the minister and the President to determine the snag in the non-appointment of board members.
“Threatening to suspend or expel a party member without hearing from his side amounts to power intoxication and lack of understanding of the party constitutional provisions,” he said.
Labour leaders react Speaking in separate chats with Blueprint Weekend, the Trade Union Congress (TUC) President, Comrade Bobboi Bala Kaigama, and General Secretary of Textile and Garment Workers Union, Comrade Issa Aremu, said the situation can be resolved since the duo are from the same political affiliation.
Kaigama said: “I won’t comment on this because they are all high ranking officers of the government, I strongly believe that at the government level they will be able to sort themselves out.
So, it is not for us to make comments whether it is right or wrong.” Also, the General Secretary of Textile and Garment workers union, Comrade Issa Aremu, said it “is unfortunate that the minister will wait to be reminded before inaugurating boards of parastatal under his watch.” He said: “What the Minister should have done is to inaugurate the board, and when he’s talking about procurement it means he does not know the responsibility of NSITF, which is to provide social security for the working people.
“It is part of bad governance for a minister to be reminded to facilitate the constitution of the board of an agency under him or her.
“There are agency that do those ones already, as I speak now ICPC and EFCC are doing their jobs in fighting corruption in different agencies but that doesn’t mean the board should not be constituted.
“The way forward is very simple; they are in the same party so they have to put their house in order.
What Nigerians need is that under APC, all board of agencies have been constituted.” Findings According to APC Constitution, no member of the party can be expelled unless the National Executive Council (NEC) ratifies such decision.
The worst, it stipulates, that the Oshiomholeled leadership can do is to influence the ward executive to suspend any erring member.
Blueprint Weekend also learnt that there may be certain interests which the former Labour leader and the Minister are protecting, but are hiding under the guise of protecting public interest.
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