The Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige has described President Muhammadu Buhari as the father of modern Nigeria. In an interview conducted by GEOFFREY ANYANWU in Awka, Anambra State, Ngige said with the solid foundation being laid by the President in all sectors, Nigeria would soon boom again. Ngige spoke on the new minimum wage and other national issues.
Before the election, the issue of minimum wage was raging. Was it a political strategy?
There
is nothing political about it. This President cares about workers. I
care about workers; I have been a worker before, so, we all feel the
pains. We all know that the economy; at least, that the minimum wage
will move from the present N18,000 to something else. So, that was why
we did all the negotiations as should be done. The President put up a
committee that advised him, recommended N30,000, even though the
recommendation was not by consensus as required by the ILO Conventions
and Regulations but the President in his magnanimity listened to the
governors who currently are unable to pay the N18,000 now and who made a
case and said that they have submitted a bid for N22,500. So, he said
that they should come up with good statistics to convince him on why
they cannot pay the N30,000. The Senate had on Tuesday also okayed N30,
000 and as they had passed the bill, anytime they go to Mr. President
for assent, he will do so. He has given his word on that.
On employment, your party spoke of giving Nigerians work, what do we expect to see in the next four years in this regard?
The
employment situation will be much better this time around, because we
are continuing with our economic recovery and growth plan which in the
main is for us to diversify the economy; that is the main thrust of that
plan; diversification of the economy so that the economy does not rely
on oil only for us to make money. It has already been done, we are
achieving results. Our earnings from taxes, whether it’s customs duty or
Internally Generated Revenue, have increased so much that the
collection from the FIRS alone is in the region of Trillions. We also
have collection from Customs, we have collections from other offices,
other royalties, taxes from oil miners, gas explorers and people in the
oil-related industries. All those taxes have since been well harnessed
and more importantly, we have blocked leakages. The single treasury
account has put every fund in public glare, funds that were under the
table that can be swept off or stolen without anybody seeing them; they
are all now placed on the table by the TSA, all accounts are now TSA
account and in the Central Bank and you can now know what this
establishment has and if this establishment is paying money, you know to
whom they paid it, for what purpose and how much. So, these are the
things that are in the ERGP.
Agriculture again is a major
source of diversification and today, we are eating what we produce, what
we grow here. Rice for example is a major staple here and we have been
consuming before now, about five to 10 tonnes a day in terms of
importation of rice from outside, China and the rest of them but today,
95 per cent of the rice we eat is produced from Nigeria. Five percent,
imported. In fact, people told me that it’s about three percent to two
percent now but we are looking forward in this clime to exporting rice
so that we can do 100 percent our rice here, do 100 per cent of our
beans here, sorghum was already on the world map, we are third best
exporter and the other things. So, we need to start earning money from
agriculture. We should be, we have the fertile soil. We have the soil,
we have the workforce; young workforce unlike the old times. We also
have better facilities now in terms of fertilizer, in terms of equipment
and so, agriculture should be a major stay. It can become our main stay
after oil, followed by solid minerals. There are a lot of solid
minerals here that are untapped. We’re going to do them and make no
mistake about it, President Buhari is the father of modern Nigeria. He
is the one laying all the foundations and these foundations are solid
foundations not fragile and all these that he is doing translate to more
infrastructure and for as long as you have more money, you can do more
infrastructure. So, we are doing more blockages, we are building more
infrastructures through the money we are getting and through some loans,
cheap money, cheap funds from China in particular to build railways, to
do electricity, to do roads. These are the major infrastructure in the
land and when you are doing infrastructures, you are creating jobs.
Power
is another area that will be tackled, tackled very seriously in the
next four years of President Buhari and when he tackles power, he will
create a lot of small scale jobs; people who are doing vulcanizing,
people who are doing tailoring, people who are doing carpentry, they
will all resort to electricity and not the small generating sets where
you will be buying fuel and diesel. The national grid power, you will
see them, they will multiply their shops, they will put branches and
these branches will employ people, many, many people. The big industries
– Dunlop, Michelin and all these industries that fled to Ghana, they
will come back because why they fled to Ghana was because of power. They
will come back and when they come back here, they will utilize our
local rubber and more rubber will be grown, more farmers will attend to
rubber and all these are employment. So I’m looking forward to that and
it will come.
Can you put a figure to how many people you have employed so far and how many are we expecting in this second term?
I
can’t give you any figure because they come in various ways like
through the Anchor Borrowers loans and these loans are used to improve
fertilizer, and it’s been working. There’s a lot of money in farming, a
lot. There’s this awareness now that farming is no longer a derogatory
job. It’s even a job that makes you to be proud. In the North, they are
the people who pay first for hajj before those that are government
sponsored. They buy vehicles, they train their children; they send them
to schools. Mr. President complained that the only aspect that worries
him is that they are marrying more wives in the North. So, you can see
that it is a major employment. It’s only in the South; South-South and
South East that you see people not taking farming seriously but if you
go to Ayamelum area of Anambra State, you’ll see what Coscharis is doing
with rice farming. There are so many other big people there too; big
rice mills that are there. If you go to Ebonyi, same. Today, Ebonyi rice
cannot be compared to any rice in the world. It’s even better than Thai
rice. The taste is sweeter, very delicious. So, you can now see that
this country is changing and that is the change agenda we said we’re
giving. So, after four years, we said that in another four years, we
move you to the next level and this next level will be a level of
Eldorado, I can assure you. This is the level that we shall attack power
and infrastructure frontally, more vigorously than we are doing now;
railways, roads, the harbours and water transportation, the airways,
electricity and what have you. Once you do all these, you have created
jobs. So, we expect more jobs will come. This is apart from the social
intervention projects of N-power where we today have at least half a
million young graduates who could not get jobs being given temporary
appointment for two years on N30,000 per month and Shell improvement
programme of conditional cash transfer for the vulnerable; those who
cannot do anything anymore; for the weak and poor. AGIP which is another
cash loan programme that is in hundreds of thousand for businesses, we
intend to intensify all those; fine-tune them. There is the immediate
term and then long term. This is the way it is spread.
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