Senator Chris Ngige, is the Nigerian Minister of Labour and Employment. In an interview with newsmen in Abuja at the weekend, he reveals the modalities which the federal government will adopt for payment of the allowance to unemployed persons as he explains why he will not participate in the Anambra Central senatorial re-run election among other issues. BODE OLAGOKE was there.
Would you be participating in the March senatorial election in Anambra central?
For official reason I am not running because I have an assignment given to me by Mr. President as minister of Labour and employment. As a matter of fact, that job is 60% more of employment generation than doing labout matters, 40% of it is doing labour matters; labour industrial, labour relations, workers welfare and rest of them all. But employment generation, unemployment in this nation is a scourge, is a very serious disease in Nigeria now and we need to finght it frontaly.
So, I have gone to that ministry, I have received briefing from my relevant desk officers and top managers committee and I feel that Nigeria is at crossroad and is not something we should treat with kits gloves.
What should we expect from your ministry?
The APC manifesto list what we are going to do; we promise Nigerians we are going to create jobs, create employment and unfortunately for us the state of the economy has taken a very serious down-turn. So it needed Spartans like me to keep our flag flying by getting out water from the rocks, that is exactly what we to do.
What will be the modalities for the payment of stipend promised by APC government?
We have a lot of programme that is poverty alleviating and employment generating. Some of these you would have known, is the 500 teachers’ conversion scheme, which the President also had made public. We are doing the preliminaries, it is an inter-ministerial affairs it would span through Ministry of Education, Ministry of Agriculture and my place (Ministry of Labour. Agriculture, because we have some agricultural Universities we will convert some people to teach the relevant agricultural science.
We also have NDE scheme, Directorate of Employment, where we have skills acquisition centres all over the federation. NDE as an organ of government that have their own skills acquisition centres.
The ministry has specialists Skills Acquisition centres; we have seven like that base in the ministry under the commissioner of skills or directorate for skills. The NDE have over 120 scattered all over the country, we also have those that have been built by state government and we want to capture all of these into that scheme and then, get people to the scheme; to be bricklayers, to be POP designer and builders to be welders, to be electronics repairer and the one they called Mecha-tronic, repair of vehicles, automobile carpentry, painting and fabrication of all sorts.
We are going to do it, teach people, give them certification, because many people do not know that Ministry of Labour is the only place that can certified tradesmen.
This skills acquisition centres are in grades, we have grade A certification, Grade B, Grade C, D and E Certification, they all still exist. So we want to get back our youths, capture them, teach them to use their hands, and when they used their hands, they can earn money by employing themselves. If you get a bricklayer, or a painter today, you cannot pay less than N5000 for a daily job. And if somebody is able to work 20 days in a month for N5000, he already has N100,000. But, today is a sad story, that is the Togolese, Ghannians, people from Benin Republic, people from Niger Republic that do all these skilled job for us.
80% workers in that specialize category in construction site all over Nigeria, be it in Abuja, in Lagos or in Onitsha, they come from outside, and we don’t know, that little drops of water, form, ocean, the money or the naira they are paid is repatriated to their country and all of them will come at the end of the day to put pressure on naira in the foreign exchange market.
So we decided that, we have to train our own youths, let them use their finds to fend for themselves. We will also want vto advance some of them into entrepreneurship.
If you are very good, we can open a place for you and give you money through the Bank of Industry and SMEDAN and then you move to the next stage and a number of youth to work with you. So if one person is going to work with five other persons, you know the multiplier effect, so we have this programme on skills acquisition. We also have the programme on, the commissioner cash transfer.
Though even you the press has said it, it N5000 for people to be indolent, No country in the world, would pay people to go home and sleep and collect cash so Nigerian would not be an exception.
We will pay N5000, we will pay some N10,000, and even for people in teacher conversion scheme, we will pay more than N10,000, N15,000 as stipend while in training, and then after the training, they are going to be employed by state government and the Federal Government in different institution. It is not a programme we shall run alone, the state government are going to buy into it, they are going to synchronize with us we do it, we are going to do in synergy.
We are partnering with International Labour Organization (ILO) to give us technical assistance, we are approaching the DFID, to give us technical assistance in the issue of training. We also have Conditional Cash Transfer direct payment to market women to beef up their working capital. And we need also to touch the vulnerable, when we talk of the vulnerable, we actually means the old and aged ones that cannot do any of these things we are talking about.
We also means the physically challenged, the blinds, the cripple and others that cannot as of right do something to help themselves and these are programmes we have and in agriculture we also have another programme, whereby the youth will also come and the Central Bank would do that with us; give you some money, give you rice paddy, and then seedlings, and you will cultivate, you harvest, you parboil, you dis-stone and we give you another money then you bag after that you sell, government can buy back and do business with you on the money you get.
The collateral then would be the field and the column you have there especially in the area of rice cultivation, tomatoes cultivation and so many other products, especially products that are imported into the country. And if you look at the CBN list, that is why we have banned Tomatoes paste, rice will soon follow, because there is no reason Niigeria cannot feed herself.
We have the available land, we have the workforce and if we do good agriculture extension advise to farmers, and put in literate farmers, those who have gone to school, that is no how you will tell me we will not have enough rice.
We also have graduate internship scheme, which right now is under ministry of finance, it was the last regime that put it in Ministry of finance, it is anomalous, it is a congou’s, at the right time when we review the programme, we will bring them all under one canopy so that we can monitor them effectively.
So this is what we bring and that is why my official assignment is too strong for me now to leave then go to now start contesting for Senate seat. And on a personal reason, too the reasons are both official and personal. I am bereaved I lost my father, the burial is next week and in our customs, we don’t make public appearances of sorts like been on campaign and all those sorts of things. So I am on a personal basis incapacitated. In a way to go into an election right now. So these are the reasons.
On Senator Ekwunife’s endorsement
At the time Sen. Ekwunife came she was the only person who was an APC person that wanted to do the reruns if she is the only person, I have no objection but today I’m told that two other people have shown interest, the party would do the normal thing and the normal thing the party is to do is to run a primary the question of baptizing of blessing now does not arise.
Does APC stand a chance without Ngige in the race?
We stand a very good chance, my political structure is there, the party has its own machinery. They’re interwoven and if I don’t want to over estimate I will say that if you combine my structure with that of the party, I don’t have an Organisation as such but there are certain things that go for me in that senatorial district, the party, before the election starts, a solid 40-45 percent vote that she can say is her own based on our effect.
APGA is not a push over in the state, it can boast of say 30 percent. PDP can boast of maybe 10-15 percent. Out of those 10-15 percent, Sen. Ekwunife has some because she has ran a federal constituency two times and won therefore she’s not a push over. If you do an additive of all these I mentioned, the chance of the party is bright and we will work hard in taking that seat because we want to show that the state is not an APGA state or a PDP state.
I ran an election there in 2011 and won and for governorship in 2010 and even with the INEC declared result it was obvious to most people that I won the election but Obi I was declared with only 97,000 votes, I and Soludo followed with either 82,000 and 85000. You can see that that state is really not owned by the PDP. APC has been strong there from the time of AC metamorphosing to ACN and then to APC today, we have always paid our dues there and we’ve always stood up to be counted.
On APGA court challenge
It’s a fresh election and besides for us in APC we are on very safe ground because section 33 of the electoral act permits us to substitute a candidate who has either died or has withdrawn. The two elections I ran, I came in as a substitute candidate in those two elections.
That section has always been there to make allowance for people who for circumstances beyond their control could not continue. The APGA candidate should better go to the field and ask for votes rather than wasting his time in court to stop the candidature of another person.
