Alfaki Muhammad
The Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has quizzed Chris Ngige, one of the Ministers in the cabinet of former President Muhammadu Buhari.
Ngige, who was in charge of Labour and Employment Ministry, was questioned over his role in some contracts and jobs racketeering that happened in one of the agencies when he held sway.
It was learnt that the former Minister was with the crack detectives of the ICPC for about five hours on Wednesday to answer some probing questions on how some contracts awarded in Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF).
It was reported how the ICPC invited some top officials of the NSITF for questioning over payment of N47m gratuity to the immediate-past MD of the agency, Mrs Maureen Allagoa, when she was still serving.
In the same vein, the immediate-past Minister of Labour, Simon Lalong, who is now in the Senate, set up a special investigative committee to probe alleged irregularities in different contract awards to the tune of N1.8bn in the agency.
The anti-graft agencies — the ICPC and the EFCC — have since waded into the matter with the latest invitation to the former minister. Ngige was invited when he was away in the United States for medical check-ups.
ICPC sources who were familiar with the matter said that Ngige was invited to shed more light on the award and abandonment of multi-million naira electronic NSITF popularly known as e-NSITF, for which Ngige got approval from the Federal Executive Council (FEC) under former President 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),” one of the operatives confided in our correspondent.
An ally of the former minister clarified that Ngige was not arrested as claimed by some people, saying he had since left the headquarters of the anti-graft agency in Abuja after providing necessary explanations.
He said, “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.”
When approached for comments, spokesman of the ICPC, Demola Bakare, simply said he wasn’t aware of the development. He promised to find out and get back to our correspondent, but he was yet to do so as at when filing this report.
