The Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, has said he has the consent of the president to stay action on inaugurating the board of the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) pending the outcome of an administrative enquiry recently set up by the ministry to investigate the alleged looting in the agency.
Ngige, in a statement, recalled that the president in October 2017, nominated the board of the NSITF with a former President of NUPENG, Chief Frank Kokori, as chairman, but was not inaugurated alongside others: National Productivity Centre (NPC), National Directorate of Employment (NDE), Micheal Imoudu National Institute for Labour Studies (MINILS) pending the outcome of the investigations.
The minister charged members of other boards that had been inaugurated against repeating the rot in the NSITF.
“The operations of the various parastatals must strictly conform with financial regulations; especially Section 32 and the provisions of the Procurement Act. The audited accounts of the parastatals must always be prepared and submitted to the relevant authorities as at when due.
“The NSITF, for example, is reeling from massive looting with no audited account for five years. A whooping sum of N5bn was unearthed by the audit panel of enquiry as having been taken out of NSITF coffers with First Bank in one single day without vouchers. Worse still, the organisation maintained no cashbook as required by financial regulations. This resulted in massive looting of funds by board members acting in concert with the management staff.
“When we say N5bn taken in one day; that’s not the only amount missing. Over N30bn cannot be accounted for and the members of the past board participated actively in the looting. We want to know how board members who are not part of the management found their way so deep to have participated in plundering of the agency,” Ngige declared.
The minister disclosed that non-executive board members representing various interests like NLC, Nigeria Employers Consultative Assembly (its former President) – including the chairman of the board, and some management staff had been charged to court by the EFCC, saying, “That’s why the president agreed for us to do an administrative enquiry there to explain the total failure of the internal audit mechanism for checking that no money leaves any government establishment without voucher.”
Ngige assured that once the panel of enquiry concluded its findings and government issued a gazette on its conclusions, a new board would be inaugurated.
