Workers of the New Nigerian Newspapers (NNN) Limited, have asked the Northern Governors’ Forum, to urgently compel management of the company under the leadership Mr. Yusuf Musa Kontagora to pay all their due entitlements without any further delay.
The workers at a press conference at the Kaduna headquarters of the company on Tuesday, said the management of New Nigerian Newspapers and the committee have 14 days ultimatum to pay workers all benefits or face more protests from workers.
Led by Mr. Amos Mathew who is Chairman of the press conference committee, and Mr. Nicolas Dekera, Secretary of the committee, the workers recalled that their plight began after the federal government handed over the New Nigerian Newspapers to Northern Governors with backlog of pensions and salary arrears.
According to Mathew, the Northern Governors headed by the then Chairman who is now Nigeria’s Vice President, Senator Kashim Shettima, later approved public private partnership and splited the company into three (3) which included newspaper production, printing and publishing in commercial quantities and commercial properties, and total liquidation of the company and all its landed properties across the country to settle its liabilities once and for all.
“Pursuant to the aforementioned, a committee was set up with its membership drawn from Northern Capital Properties Limited (NCPL), New Nigerian Newspapers management, EFCC and Office of the Kaduna SSG which commenced sale of NNN properties immediately.
“In order to fast-tract the process for payment of workers’ benefits, the former Kaduna state governor, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, facilitated the payment and liquidation of all outstanding pensions and gratuities of all federal government workers under New Nigeria Newspapers by Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) in December, 2021. One would have expected that the burden would become less but a litany of agony ensued.
“Surprisingly NNN management and the committee that turned deaf ears to Northern Governors directives to pay workers went ahead to expressly spend about 200 Million Naira on contractors and other unknown expenditures out of the money realised without paying a penny to Workers.
Narrating some deliberate bottlenecks hindering the payment, part of which were linked to a litigation in court, he said “as at today, more than 90% of the property have been sold and over N2.7billion realised (with some of these property fully acquired and renovation works commenced, a very good example is the Popular Nagwamatse house in the heart of Kaduna city) but allegedly kept inside the same account management and committee claimed have been garnished”.