ICPC grills Ngige over alleged contracts and job racketeering under Buhari

Chris Ngige, the Minister of Labour and Employment under immediate past President Muhammadu Buhari, has been grilled by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC).

According to reports, the former minister was a guest at the ICPC headquarters in Abuja on Wednesday, September 4, 2024, where he spent about five hours answering some probing questions from crack detectives.

He was made to answer questions on his role in some alleged contracts and job racketeering, which happened in one of the agencies when he held sway at the ministry.

The anti-graft agency was investigating contracts awarded at the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF).

It’d be recalled that ICPC had earlier invited some top officials of the NSITF to question them about the payment of an ₦47 million gratuity to the immediate past Managing Director of the agency, Maureen Allagoa when she was still in active service.

At the same time, Ngige’s successor, Simon Lalong, who is now in the Senate, had set up a special investigative committee to probe the alleged irregularities in different contract awards up to N1.8 billion in the agency.

The ICPC and its sister agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) have since waded into the matter, leading to the invitation of Ngige.

The former minister received the invitation while he was away in the United States for medical check-ups.

Sources within the agency said he was invited to shed more light on the award and abandonment of multi-million naira electronic NSITF, otherwise known as e-NSITF, for which Ngige got the Federal Executive Council (FEC) approval under Buhari.

“Yes, our detectives had interaction with him. We had since invited him in line with our SOP but he told us he was outside the country. So, we had to give him some time to finish what he went to do in the US. So, he honoured our invitation yesterday (Wednesday),” Daily Trust quoted an ICPC source.

An ally of the former Governor was also quoted to have clarified that he was not arrested as erroneously claimed by some people, noting that Ngige has since left the agency’s headquarters after providing necessary explanations.

“He was invited when he was out of the country to make clarification on some claims made by staff and he went there on his own yesterday to make clarifications. He wasn’t arrested by anyone.

“He went on his own, made clarification based on submissions made by staff over ministerial/presidential approval of some issues and he left immediately after that,” he said.

However, a spokesman of the ICPC, Demola Bakare, denied knowledge of the development when he was approached for comments but promised to find out and revert.