NGIGE, KOKORI: WHEN TWO ELEPHANTS FIGHT

The ‘fight’ between Ngige and Kokori over NSITF is an unnecessary diversion, writes Emma Agu

The recent media campaign casting aspersions at the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige, over the delay in inaugurating the board of the Nigerian Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) is a very unfortunate development. Frank Kokori, chairman nominee of the NSITF who is spearheading this campaign, claims that Ngige is running a one man show; that the minister has been busy populating the Fund with members of his community before he was stopped; that the savings of Nigerian workers are domiciled in the Fund.

Kokori is not alone in criticising the delay in inaugurating boards of federal establishments. Some critics have gone to the extent of insinuating that the delay is to afford the All Progressives Congress-led federal government the leeway to siphon funds for the 2019 general elections. Others impute ethnic undertones; that President Muhammadu Buhari simply allowed his kinsmen a field day to run the parastatals according to their whims and caprices. When you hear this kind of allegation, you are left with the impression that all the MDAs are headed by the president’s kinsmen from Katsina. Pray, is Ngige one of his kinsmen?

That said, there are indeed genuine reasons to worry over allowing long and serious gaps in the structure of government. First, it is difficult to do so without committing serious constitutional breaches on infringing on the governance environment envisioned to guarantee transparency and accountability. Second, it is axiomatic that power corrupts and absolute power breeds absolute corruption. It therefore goes without saying that wherever it occurs, no matter the ministry, department or agency of government, such a scenario should not be allowed to fester indefinitely. Besides, boards usually add fresh insight into the running of organisations and as extensions of the social capital, can be quite useful in broadening the resource base of the MDAs as they implement government polices of course with the ministry, having an over-arching eye on all her parastatals as their supervisor. It is in these contexts that Kokori’s discomfiture begins to gain some currency.

For the benefits of those who do not know, it is important to state that Comrade Kokori has been a dogged fighter for the rights of workers. He remains one of the most powerful General Secretaries (GS) produced by the National Union of Petroleum and Gas Workers (NUPENG) - even though GS are paid staff. In his day, the fear of NUPENG was the beginning of wisdom for any government. You can ask the Abacha Government in 1993/1994. He is also a very smart political actor who, as he amply demonstrated during the June 12 debacle in Nigeria, can adopt the most invidious propaganda machinery to achieve his objectives. In other words, most times, the line between his patriotism and self-interest can, at best, be very tenuous indeed. From that standpoint, characterising his present position could be tricky: where do you draw the line between habitual activism and the noble pursuit of the interest of workers? This becomes necessary because today staff/workers of NSITF are praising Ngige to high heavens, for being the first minister to tour their establishments in Abuja, Lagos, Kano, Port Harcourt, Enugu, Bauchi, etc., and making sure that all their outstanding allowances and contributions are straightened out.

To start with, it is rather unfair and smacks of laughable hypocrisy to single Ngige out, as Kokori had done, as far back as January 2018, as obstructing the inauguration of the NISTF Board. For it is common knowledge that inauguration of boards had been tacitly placed on hold before the recent directive by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) placing a deadline to start off the boards. To be sure, the delay in inaugurating the boards had raised concerns over the legitimacy of actions of the managements of these companies. For another, certain statutory approvals affecting staff welfare such as appointments and promotions, discipline and even infrastructural development had suffered undue delays. However, it will be misleading to place Kokori’s agitation just within this construct. For he knows and Nigerian Labour Congress also knows that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has been investigating the place since 2016 and it was not until November/December that they charged about six persons from the last former board to court for various financial malfeasance and even obtained temporary forfeitures on properties and accounts traced to members of the former boards.

Something appears to be amiss about his agitation. Yes: agitation. For that is what he has turned his grouse into. In content, temperament and methodology, Kokori’s agitation smacks of a vicious effort to unsettle the minister by instigating a media crisis to the effect that he is disobeying the president. Such a strategy is designed to fit the present national narrative that the president is not in charge; that his aides have pulled the rug from under his feet and that his noblest intentions have been derailed by his aides.

But it will be entirely wrong to situate Nigige’s position within that context. On the contrary, the minister has made it clear that he sought and got the president’s nod to put an administrative panel to look into the breakthrough of the financial regulations and internal audit mechanism of the place and to stay action on the board’s inauguration, pending conclusion of the work of the committee investigating allegations of massive diversion of funds by the previous board. This runs into huge billions of naira! While it is debatable whether anything would be lost if the board was inaugurated, it does not seem that anything stands to be lost by allowing a little more time for the panel to conclude its work and for the government to look at it, and, put in place the appropriate structures that will prevent future board members from doing “business as usual” of the yesteryears.

Quite frankly, one is rankled by the language ascribed to Chief Kokori who, at this stage should have qualified to be addressed as an elder statesman. It is bad enough that he descends to the usual Nigerian pastime of dressing every situation in ethnic garb. But to reduce the minister to an unserious person who is always attending burials and sundry matters as he did in his Gani Fawehinmi Lecture in Lagos recently as reported by Sahara Reporters is to descend to the nadir of pettiness and mischief. Ngige’s track record is a standing repudiation of any such claim. When Nigerians and International agencies heap encomiums on the Anambra miracle, they are simply paying tribute to Gov. Ngige whose regime sowed the seeds of the renaissance being aggressively pursued by Governor Willie Obiano.

Besides, if Kokori is looking for anybody who will do anything to undermine the president’s anti-corruption crusade, he should look elsewhere. While I am not in a position to claim that the Labour Minister is a saint, one thing I know for a fact: his loyalty to Buhari even at the threat of filial disconsolation from his tribesmen does not permit any iota of treachery; Kokori can go to the bank with this. Also Comrade Kokori getting the NLC to issue threats on his non-inauguration into a board that is 100 per cent federal government-owned, in which the FG, in the spirit of labour tripartism, is carrying the social partners along, to me also smacks of a huge political miscalculation. After all by the 2004 Act of NSITF, is not the minister the one that recommends to the president who to appoint chairman. Are we to expect a fight between a minister and his chairman ad-infinitum in this case?

If I have any worry about the face-off between the minister and the incoming board chairman, it is in the fact that both men are gladiators of no mean order. Kokori, as earlier said, is a dogged fighter. Play back Ngige’s day as Governor of Anambra State and you will see a human matador, a man who is ready to sacrifice all for any principle he stands for-fighting Godfathers backed by a sitting President Obasanjo without caring, all for the benefit of the people of Anambra State. So what gives, in the circumstance? We should be mindful of the saying that when two elephants fight, it is only the grass that suffers. By extension, this “fight” between two elephants is an unnecessary diversion from the serious challenges confronting the PMB Administration at this moment. It should not be allowed to fester