Pensioners union asks Buhari to call labour minister Ngige to order after he creates rival body

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari has been asked by the Nigeria Union of Pensioners (NUP) to call labour minister Dr Chris Ngige to order after he is alleged to have sought to divide the body using nepotistic and ethnic divisive tactics.

In his capacity as labour and employment minister, Dr Ngige oversees the activities of the NUP and earlier today, the body accused the minister of attempting to split it by playing the ethnic card. According to the labour union, Dr Ngige was sponsoring people from his own ethnic group to cause confusion.

NUP general secretary, Elder Actor Zal, has accused Dr Ngige of creating a rival body in a bid to sow division among the ranks of Nigerian pensioners. He accused the minister of forming a rival association known as the Federal Parastatals and Private Sector Pensioners Association of Nigeria, which recently asked the Federal Ministry of Labour for registration.

Elder Zal, said: “Our attention has once again been drawn to the renewed efforts by the minister of labour and employment Dr Chris Ngige, to illegally regroup, despite the pensioners’ resolve to remain in one indivisible union. To achieve this ignoble objectives, Dr Ngige deliberately went shopping for few disgruntled elements within the union from his tribe, organised them and sponsored them with government money, including PHCN superannuation funds to the tune of N407m, recently collected by the self-appointed interim president of the minister’s pensioners’ association.

“We want to alert the general public that the efforts of the minister is self-serving and is not in the best interest of the country. Furthermore, what the minister is about to do is not only contrary to existing labour laws, it will also amount to the proliferation of industrial unions.

“This is what the labour law is actually guiding against as Section 3(2) of the Trade Union Act clearly settles this matter when it says no trade union shall be registered to represent workers or employers in a place where there already exists a trade union. For this reason, the drafters of the Trade Union Act posited that there should be only one union in each industry representing the interest of workers in that sector."

He added that the minister’s intention of window-shopping for ways to divide the pensioners union is not only barbaric and crude but the height of insensitivity of a government appointee. They have called on President Buhari to reign Dr Ngige in over the matter.