Keyamo: Ngige Apologises Before Senate President

The Minister of Labour, Productivity and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige has apologized to the leadership of the National Assembly over last week’s face-off between the Minister of State For Labour, Festus Keyamo and the joint Senate and House Committees on Labour, Productivity and Employment.

The Minister tendered an apology on Tuesday in an address delivered when he led a delegation from the Ministry on a visit to the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, at the National Assembly, Abuja.

Ngige said: “Having visited your domain to the Joint Committee on Labour, Productivity and Employment over some issues of the Special Public Works Programme of the Federal Government, a Programme that was designed by the Executive with the legislature, if the Executive makes a proposal and it is not funded, then that proposal will be dead on the table.

“We deeply regret the incident that happened, the altercation that followed it, between my Minister of State and members of the Joint Committee.

“Therefore, we decided that as a team, we would come with full force and give the necessary information that we need so that we can fast track this Programme which was designed from the office of the President before the COVID-19.

“We must work hand-in-hand without acrimony or even drawing a very rigid line of who has this power and who doesn’t. That is the only way the programmes of government can be made sustainable and executed for the benefit of our people.

“Therefore, Mr. President, I apologize on behalf of my Ministry for what took place the last time, and I hope this apology will be taken by members of the Committee and the entire National Assembly, because I’m aware and I know that a Committee is a representative of the whole. The committee room is an extension of our hallowed chambers.

“I, therefore, request that we forgive and forget. Let us turn a new page and start off on this Programme which the National Assembly has indicated that they’ve suspended. We can’t suspend forever programmes that affect our people.

“This is an intervention Programme by which the government wants to put in N52 billion into the economy. In fact, those who are impoverished by the lockdown of the pandemic can get some relief.”

The Senate President in his response explained that the decision by the National Assembly to approve the sum of N52 billion as requested by the Executive for the Special Public Works Programme was mainly out of confidence in the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) to implement accordingly.

He stated that the Ministry of Labour, Productivity and Employment only has a supervisory role to play in the implementation of the Programme designed to recruit 774,000 Nigerians.

“When Mr. President presented the request for the appropriation of N52 billion for Public Works, the National Assembly Committees scrutinized and recommended to the plenary of the two chambers the same request without any change, while recommending the passage.

“The National Assembly passed that request feeling convinced that this is one Programme that is needed in this country especially at this time.

“But we were also conscious of one thing, who should implement the programme? That was one of our considerations. Even the Executive requested that the National Directorate for Employment (NDE) should implement the Programme, and we agreed with that for the following reasons.

“NDE has been in existence since 1986, and is established by law, and that was our reason for keeping the money in NDE to implement as an agency.

“They have a staff strength of over 2,200, and therefore, NDE is primed to undertake such a project because it has the capacity. The Ministry of Labour at the headquarters has no such capacity.”

According to Lawan, the Ministry’s involvement in the implementation of the programme runs contrary to the provisions of the law which only empowers NDE to make procurements.

“When the National Assembly passes a legislation and it is assents to the legislation, it becomes law. Now your task will be to supervise the NDE, because as a minister your job is to be on the NDE to give you how they intend to go about it and supervise the implementation, and not to carry out the implementation itself.

“I want to assure you Honourable Minister that we are going to support you all the way to make sure this Programme is successful, but you don’t have our support of the Ministry ventures into it.

“We will continue to insist that the Ministry should have no role more than supervision of this Programme. And if the Ministry goes ahead, that means it will be breaking the law because the budget is a law”, Lawan said.

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