Chris Ngige Is A Liar – NLC

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has said labor minister, Chris Ngige lied in his explanation of what transpired on the day the governing board of a government agency was set to be inaugurated.

Mr Chris, in a statement recently, accused NLC of bringing in thugs from other countries to the inauguration of the board of the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF).

This has attracted an angry reaction from labour leaders, who have accused Mr Ngige of planning to take over from Mr Kokori, an ex leader of the oil workers union, NUPENG. They revealed that they will not let Mr Chris appoint anyone else as chairman of the board.

The labor minister said, “Government, therefore, takes serious exception to the dishonourable actions of the NLC leadership and Mr Frank Kokori as well as his cohorts,” the labour ministry said.

In its reaction on Sunday afternoon, the NLC President, Ayuba Wabba, expressed his anger at the labour ministry’s statement.

“Ngige’s outburst and resort to gutter language is certainly an expression of his desperation to turn the NSITF into his personal estate,”

See the entire statement, “The attention of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has been drawn to a Press Statement signed by Rhoda Iliya, Assistant Director, Press, on behalf of Dr. Chris Ngige, Minister of Labour and Employment, in which the President of the Congress was alleged to have imported “violent thugs”, to disrupt the inauguration of the board of NSITF, which was to have taken place on April 18, 2019.

“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. Government therefore take [sic] serious exceptions to the dishonourable actions of the NLC leadership and Chief Frank Kokori as well as his cohorts and warn that the Ministry will not tolerate a repeat of hooliganism clearly unknown to ethos of civilised unionism”.

We are left dumbfounded at the depth Minister Ngige is prepared to go in lying to the nation and the world to cover his doomed plan to hoodwink Nigerians on his elaborate intrigue spanning three years to prevent the inauguration of the Board of the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF).

The antics of Minister Ngige and his propensity for unabated obfuscation will not distract us from doing our duty in defending and protecting the rights and interests of our members, as these remain the basic raison d’etre for our existence as a Labour Movement.

To set the record straight, on 18th April, 2019, the Congress President, Comrade Ayuba Wabba, alongside Comrade William Akporeha, President of NUPENG, led other leaders of the Labour Movement to the venue of the inauguration ceremony and waited patiently for well over two hours for the commencement of the event. There were dozens of journalists from various national media houses in the hall to cover the event. The DSS also had its operatives on the ground as well as the police. The fact that there was not even a single reported incident of breakdown of law and order, or the arrest of any person for unruly behaviour is a categorical attestation to the peaceful and calm manner in which all those who came for the occasion conducted themselves.

Secondly, the fact that the NLC have statutorily two members in the NSITF Board, which, by law, it is obligated to nominate means that the NLC President and all the other workers who turned up for the long overdue inauguration had every business to be there.

We are therefore shocked with the deployment of derogatory and confrontational words by Minister Ngige. As social partners, we naturally expect the Ministry of Labour and Employment, and any of its ministers or staff, to relate with organised labour guided by utmost dignity. Any Minister of Labour who thinks organised labour is subordinate to him or her or the Ministry is clearly living in an illusion.”