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Tag: Ngige

  • Ngige seeks lasting solution to unemployment

    Ngige seeks lasting solution to unemployment

    Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige has called for measures to curb rising unemployment.

    Job creation policies and programmes, he said, must anticipate future labour market requirements rather than reacting to them.

    Ngige, who spoke  while inaugurating the National Employment Council and unveiling the revised National Employment Policy in Abuja, said: “In co-ordinating implementation of strategies to fast-track employment creation, we must bear in mind that such strategies are most likely to be successful, if they anticipate future labour market requirement rather than reacting to them.

    He said Nigeria had to move away from past approaches where strategies for employment creation and poverty alleviation were done in response to crises, or as temporary measures to mitigate the impact.

    Ngige said unemployment is a global challenge, adding that Nigeria, like other nations, needs to take proactive measures towards curbing the menace, stressing that the concern is even more urgent due to the link between youth idleness and perennial violent crimes in the different parts of the country, which pose threat to socio-economic stability.

    Ngige said the task before the council was formidable. He expressed confidence in the council’s ability to come up with the solution that will, in the medium and long-term, reverse the alarming trend of unemployment.

    “The task before this council is formidable. However, with the calibre of members of this council, which is made up of renowned experts, practitioners and policymakers in development and employment promotion, I have no doubt in my mind that you have what it takes to proffer solutions that will, ultimately, halt and in the medium and long-term reverse the current unemployment situation in the country,” the minister said.

    The Ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Bolaji Adebiyi, said  unemployment and poverty are critical challenges that  require  concerted efforts of all stakeholders to address.

    Adebiyi emphasised that it was in a bid to address the unemployment crisis that the National Employment Policy was formulated with the aim of consolidating into an integrated and coherent document, a beacon for attaining full employment for Nigerians, particularly the youth.

  • FG to probe mismanagement of N62.3bn in NSITF

    FG to probe mismanagement of N62.3bn in NSITF

    The Federal Government has constituted an administrative panel of inquiry to investigate how N62.3 billion was mismanaged by the former Management and Board of the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF).

    The Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, who inaugurated the panel on Thursday announced a compulsory 30 days leave in the first instance for officers of the Fund to enable the panel carry out its assignment without hindrance.

    Those to proceed on compulsory leave are the General Manager, Legal, Adebayo A. Aderibigbe; Deputy General Manager, Finance, Henry Ekhasomi; General Manager, Social Security, Ishmael Agaka; Deputy General Manager, Internal Audit, Zwalda Ponkap; General Manager, Information, Catherine Ugbe and General Manager, Compensation, Dr. Kelly Nwagha.

    The minister said the nine -member panel headed by the Director of Finance and Accounts of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, Ishaya A. Awotu, would look into the financial state of the NSITF with a view to purging it of all negative trails inflicted on it by the last board and management.

    Ngige said: “As you may be aware, the last Board and Administration of the NSITF left negative trails inimical to any advancement and progress for both the human and infrastructural components of the NSITF.

    “The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had discovered various acts of fraudulent diversions from the Federal Government and Private Sector Contributions amounting to N62.3 billion as at 2015, allegedly perpetrated by the past board and management staff of the NSITF.”

    He said though the EFCC is already handling the criminal investigations leading to the prosecution of the former Managing Director, General Manager, Legal and the Deputy General Manager, Finance and Accounts, it was important to further unearth the administrative machinery that made the looting of such a colossal sum of public fund possible and forestall its reoccurrence.

     

  • Ngige denies saying govt spent N1b on burial  

    Ngige denies saying govt spent N1b on burial  

    Minister of Labour and Employment, Sen. Chris Ngige has said that media reports quoting him as saying that the federal government has spent about N1 billion in the burial plans of former Vice President, Alex Ekwueme were misleading, while the controversy generated by the report were needless.

    The Minister said he never attached any figure to the plans being made by the government to ensure that the former Vice President gets what he termed “a deserving national tribute to one of Nigeria’s foremost Statesman.”

    In a statement signed by the Special Assistant no Media to the Minister, Nwachukwu Obidiwe e, the Minister said he only gave a summary  of the number of projects the  Federal Government has undertaken to ensure that a man who  easily was Nigeria’s beacon of democracy was given a decent burial.

    The statement said: “Perhaps the Hon. Minister has prempted the rhetorics of cynics and detractors  who could have easily run to town to claim the Federal Government has abandoned Ekwueme in  death.

    “For the avoidance of doubt, what he did as a member of the Burial Planning  Committee was to give the details of the road rehablitation projects from the Awka end of the State and from Abia and Imo State axis , all leading to Ekwueme’s home town of Oko, as well as the   medical services, the  Mausoleum and others.  But at no time did the Minister  attach a figure of One Billion Naira.

    “An unedited video and audio tape of the interview as recorded by both broadcast and print reporters  is easily within reach.

    “The Minister is an Igbo man and knows full well that just as  a count is not taken of the number of children a parent is blessed with in Igbo tradition, the same tradition holds the burial rites and attendant expenses even more sacred to warrant such display of figures.

    “ However, it is important  to add that such pieces of  information in an administration such as ours  that is  anchored on openess, and bouyed by the Freedom of Information could be at the finger tips of any investigative reporting.”

    The statement further that the Burial Planning Committee was satisfied with the progress of the  work and looked forward to a very successful event which has already kicked off beautifully and successfully  in Lagos, Abuja and Enugu.

  • Paucity of funds hampered our operations in 2017, says Ngige

    Paucity of funds hampered our operations in 2017, says Ngige

    Minister of Labour and Employment Chris Ngige has said only 20 percent of the ministry’s 2017 budget was released to the ministry before the end of the year.

    He said paucity of funds  hindered the smooth operation of the ministry.

    The minister, who spoke while defending the 2018 budget before the Senate and House Committee on Labour and Employment, however said with the reopening of the financial portal for 2017, the ministry would be able to complete all its line items before the closure of the 2017 budget at the end of March, 2018.

    Ngige said the commendable state of the ministry in both structural and service delivery was as a result of the concerted and diligent implementation of budgeted projects and prorammes in 2017 appropriation despite the paucity of budgetary releases.

    He said : “We were operating on only 20% budgetary release until January 2018. Our budget performance for 2017 would have surpassed expectations of Nigerians and critical stakeholders, if not for the paucity of funds for the implementation of plans and programmes in critical areas of capacity building, strengthening of labour councils and other capital projects which were not fully funded due to the global economic recession.

    “We are very hopeful that we will be able to complete many of the outstanding projects and programmes of all the line items of our 2017 budget before capital budget appropriation closes in March 2018. We are happy that the financial portals have just been re-opened. We, however, pledge to do more before the end of March 2018.”

    The leadership of the Senate and House of Representatives Committee on Employment, Labour and Productivity commended the minister for effective and efficient utilisation of the ministry’s 2017 budget mostly in the area of youth empowerment through skills acquisition programmes.

    The Chairman, Senate Committee on Employment, Labour and Productivity, Senator Suleiman Nasif, and his House of Representatives counterpart, Hon. Ezenwa Onyebuchi, said: “With the commendable and far-reaching implementation of the 2017 budget by your Ministry in critical areas of both the  recurrent and capital projects regardless of limited budgetary release in 2017, we believe that the impact of 2018 budget that would be fully appropriated will significantly be felt by Nigerians upon implementation.”

    The two committees tasked the minister to deal frontally with the menace of youth unemployment by widening the scope of the various vocational skills acquisition and entrepreneurship development progrmmes already championed by the ministry.

     

  • …. Ngige threatens to sue INEC

    …. Ngige threatens to sue INEC

    Labour and Employment Minister, Chris Ngige, may head to court over the inclusion of his name on the list of the candidates for yesterday’s rerun election in the Anambra Central Senatorial  District.

    Ngige threatened, yesterday, to sue the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for deliberately listing his name with a view to humiliating him.

    The minister said he had, in accordance with the provisions of the Electoral Act, informed INEC of his withdrawal from the rerun election on the 13th of January, 2016 when the election was originally  scheduled for March 2016.

    He wondered what the commission was up to after rejecting the name forwarded to it by the APC as his replacement after monitoring the primary that produced the candidate.

    He accused INEC of working for the candidate of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) to emerge unopposed.

    He described yesterday’s election as a charade.

    He said: ” I’m not participating in the said election which can be described as a charade.

    ‘I have since, by a letter dated 11th January 2016, withdrawn from this rerun  election when it was earlier scheduled for March 2016 in accordance with the provisions of sections 33 and 35 of the Electoral Act 2010 for personal and Family reasons.

    ‘My party, the APC, accepted and promptly wrote INEC for my substitution. It went ahead and communicated its intention to organise a primary election for my substitution.

    “The primary monitored by INEC was organised at Awka and the name of a new candidate that emerged was promptly submitted, only for INEC to reject the new candidate on 29 January.

    “My party, the APC and INEC are in the Court of Appeal, Abuja, over this obnoxious and illegal action of INEC with hearing on the matter fixed for 23rd of January which is still within the armbit of 90 days ordered by court, only for the INEC to fix an ‘election’ for 13th in order to give an unfair advantage to the APGA candidate to go ‘unopposed’.”

     

  • Fed Govt to stem job losses, says Ngige

    Fed Govt to stem job losses, says Ngige

    Minister of Labour and Employment Senator Chris Ngige has assured Nigerians of a brighter year, adding that the Federal Government has moved to stem job losses and create new ones.

    The Minister, in a New Year message, urged Nigerians not to tremble over the statistics on job losses released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

    He said the development was  modulated by a similar release by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), which indicated more than seven million job growth in the agricultural sector.

    Ngige said: “I wish to assure Nigerians that 2018 will not be as bleak as 2017 in terms of job losses as the Federal Government has put enough checks to forestall a repeat of what was encountered in 2017.

    “As a matter of fact, the figure released by the NBC must be placed

    alongside statistics by the CBN, which showed that over seven million jobs have been created in the agricultural sector. This is the only way to arrive at a balanced job situation in the country.”

    He further noted that the Federal Government will work harder in the New Year to create more jobs and sustain the current efforts at protecting the existing ones.

    The minister said: “We shall continue to maintain our principled stand against retrenchment and encourage the state governments to do same.”

  • FG to stem job loses in 2018, says Ngige

    FG to stem job loses in 2018, says Ngige

    The Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige has assured Nigerians that the government is doing everything possible to stem job loses, while creating new ones in 2018.

    The National Bureau of Statistics recently said that about four million Nigerians lost their jobs in 2017, an information that has led to wide criticism of the Buhari led APC government that promised to create three million jobs per annum.

    In his new year message, Ngige asked Nigerians not to worry over the recent statistics on job losses released by the National Bureau of Statistics(NBC) as the development is effectively modulated by a similar release by the Central Bank of Nigeria(CBN) which indicates over a Seven  Million job growth in the Agricultural sector during the year.

    He said: “I wish to assure Nigerians that 2018 will not be as bleak as 2017 in terms of job losses as the Federal Government has put enough checks to forestall a repeat of what was encountered in 2017. 

    “As a matter of fact, the figure released by the NBC must be placed alongside statistics by the Central Bank of Nigeria which shows that over seven Million jobs have been created in the Agricultural Sector. This is the only way to arrive at a balanced job situation in the country”.

    He said the Federal Government will work harder in the new Year to create more jobs and sustain the current efforts at protecting the existing ones, saying “We shall continue to maintain our principled stand against retrenchment and encourage the state governments to do same,” Ngige stated

  • Adeosun, Ngige, Udoma to face Reps’ panel over N17b NSITF debt

    Adeosun, Ngige, Udoma to face Reps’ panel over N17b NSITF debt

    Minister of Finance Kemi Adeosun will appear before a House of  Representatives’ ad hoc panel investigating Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of governments and private sector over non-remittance of their contributions to the Employees’ Compensation Scheme (ECS).

    As stipulated by the Employees’ Compensation Act, 2010, all MDAs at Federal, State and Local government (LG) levels are expected to register and contribute one per cent of their gross income to the scheme.

    The scheme, domiciled in the Nigerian Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF), is to encourage safety in workplace and provides compensation for death, occupational diseases and injuries, reduce personal, physical and emotional suffering of employees and their relatives as well as minimises bureaucracy and bottlenecks in determining liabilities.

    Minister of Labour and Productivity Chris Ngige, his Budget and National Planning counterpart, Udo Udoma as well as the Director General, Budget Office of the Federation, Ben Akabueze and the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF),  Ahmed Idris, were also expected to appear before the Deputy Minority Leader Chukwuka Onyema – led ad hoc panel today.

    They were to explain why the Federal Government is owing NSITF N17 billion since 2015 with the Nigerian Police Force (NPF) owing N16.2 billion since 2010 and several other MDAs.

    They were also expected to give detailed account of registered MDAs, total amount budgeted on yearly basis as well as shed light on exemptions from the scheme.

    In his presentation, NSITF’s Director General (DG), Adebayo Somefun, who has no idea of the total workforce of his agency, said only Bauchi, Taraba and Gombe states have registered but without commitments.

    The rest, including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and the 774 councils, have not.

    In contravention of the law, the DG said most MDAs have refused to register for the scheme, in spite of the fact that no agency was exempted except uniformed military personnel.

    He said civilians working in the military establishments were also expected to participate.

    He said contribution to the scheme was supposed to be deducted from source by the Ministry of Finance and the AGF.

    Somefun could not however provide the committee with the actual figure owed by individual MDAs, complaining that non-registration by recalcitrant organisations made reconciliation difficult for NSITF.

    Inspector-General Ibrahim Idris said the police was elated when the scheme was introduced but could not understand why the Police was excluded.

    Idris, who was represented by Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP), (Insurance), Ishaku Mohammed, said the AGF was formally contacted in 2014 since the contribution was expected to be deducted from source which has not been the case with the Police.

    He said the Budget Office responded in another correspondence that the NPF is excluded from the scheme and should not pay but can approach the NSITF for enrolment.

    “We did but NSITF did not ask us for payment, rather  a consultant was appointed to work with us and by 2016, a figure of N13 billion was given to us and we were asked to approach the Federal Government  for the payment or reimbursement but nothing has happened till now,” he added.

    Though the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) claimed that its establishment Act prevented it from contributing to the scheme, it nonetheless promised to work with NSITF on how to reconcile the records.

    NSITF was discovered to have defaulted on payment and mandated to pay its own contributions of N394 million to the scheme.

    The committee expressed its dissatisfaction with NSITF for not carrying out enough public awareness on the scheme, citing non-activity from state and local governments.

    Committee Chairman Onyema said: “Government at all levels should be aware that failure to register and pay the statutory contributions to the NSITF is a gross violation of the law.

    “Violating the law exposed the vast majority of Nigeria workforce to uninsured and uncovered risk and occupational hazard, which could not be compensated for.”

    ment will lead by example.”

     

  • Ngige to PENGASSAN: shelve your planned strike

    Ngige to PENGASSAN: shelve your planned strike

    •There’s agreement, says minister

    Minister of Labour and Employment Senator Chris Ngige has appealed to members of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) to shelve their planned strike scheduled to begin today, in the spirit of the conciliation brokered between it and Neconde Energy Services Ltd.

    The union is asking the government to compel the company to recalled all sacked workers within seven days and stick to the nation’s labour laws.

    It added that failure to do that, the union will have no other option than to call out its members on a nationwide indefinite strike action with effect from today.

    The union accused Neconde Energy of entrenching unfriendly labour practices in contravention of the nation’s labour laws and failing to remit taxes and pensions deducted from workers to government.

    However, Deputy Director, Press in the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment Samuel Olowookere said in a statement in Abuja yesterday that with the conciliatory meeting brokered by Minister of Labour and Employment, the impending action by PENGASSAN has effectively been arrested in line with the provisions of the relevant labour laws.

    The statement said “We recall that the Honourable Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige had on Wednesday, December 13 and Thursday, December 14, 2017, brokered long hours of conciliation  between PENGASSAN and Neconde Energy Services Ltd and secured  an agreement.

    “By that agreement, Neconde shall invite the sacked branch chairman of PENGASSAN and hold heart to heart discussion with him while PENGASSAN is to hold back proposed action pending the reconvening of the meeting in the second week of January 2018  when other contending issues relating to other oil companies would be also be sorted out.

    “We, therefore, wish to appeal to the Central Working Committee of PENGASSAN to reconsider its decision, respect the agreement and call off the scheduled action in the overall interest of the nation, more so when adequate notice of strike was not given.

    “This appeal has become imperative in order to save Nigerians from further hardship in this season of Christmas and the New year.”

  • Don’t shun opponents’ criticisms, Ngige tells governor

    Don’t shun opponents’ criticisms, Ngige tells governor

    The Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, has congratulated Anambra State Governor Willie Obiano on his re-election victory in last Saturday’s poll.

    In a message to Obiano, the minister said a historic opportunity had been offered the governor to complete projects and take on other critical areas he could not start in his first term.

    Ngige said: “The people of Anambra have offered Governor Obiano a rare opportunity for a huge delivery in view of the relaxed atmosphere often provided by a final term of office. A golden opportunity is, therefore, here for our governor to bring to fruition his ongoing projects, initiate the ones he couldn’t start in his first term as well as bring fresh ideas to tackle critical areas that will define his administration in the continent of quality governance.

    “Our people have spoken and the election is over. We must, therefore, unite behind the governor to ensure that he succeeds. Anambra is first, and the collective aspiration of our people must remain utmost. The only way to ensure this is to give necessary support to those entrusted with our mandate. The election was credible except for a few isolated cases of electoral misdemeanour by overzealous All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) chieftains in Idemili North and Nnewi South local government areas.

    “It is important that the governor extends his hands of fellowship to his opponents at the election as no good idea should be thrown away.

    “I will advise him not to throw away completely some of the constructive criticisms by his opponents during the election as some of them raised issues that will assist the him to perform better in the second stanza and etch his name indelibly in the hearts of the people. I hence wish him a very successful final term.”

    The minister also congratulated Ndi-Anambra for turning out in good numbers and making their choice.

    He hailed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for conducting a credible election as well as the security agencies for contributing to the success of the poll.