Much ado about termites at NSITF

By Nwachukwu Nwachukwu

Sweeping hardship has turned Nigeria into a desperate and dangerous space. With frustration, anger and emotion boiling over, it takes only a little to grow a mob and nearly nothing to whip the people into a threatening frenzy. Scapegoating is pervasive. Victims are lynched before their fault is ascertained. Perhaps, it is an escape from the harshness of everyday reality , which provides a sort of catharsis from chilly horizontal corruption, insecurity, among other vicious indices that kept the nation on its knees. The recent Senate Public Accounts Committee red herring on the N17 billion which went missing from the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund, NSITF, between 2012 and 2013 was one such opportunity for a public release. A decoy in itself, the Senate played on the collective short memory of Nigerians to elicit national uproar . How it was able to regurgitate and garnish anew, a decade-old financial infractions, serially investigated and punished, is an exercise in legislative creativity.

That Nigerians, used to the hullabaloo of National Assembly probes which have in times past, ended in self-saving interjections like “switch off the mic”, a euphemism for do not spill the beans, got hypnotised into a formidable army of the media trial, says a lot about the mood of the nation. Remember that a bag of local rice is N30,000 and that university students are at home because government insists it does not have resources to meet ASUU’s demands. Yet every day, billions of naira grow wings from national coffers. Hence, government is a public enemy and all needed to galvanise a mob, is to play up an official malfeasance. And so it was with the NSITF and the tale of termites.

I was at the Senate public hearing and witnessed the exchange between the current Managing Director, Michael Akabogu and the his predecessors- Munir Abubakar(210-2016), Ismail Agaka(2016-2017) and Bayo Somefun (2017-2020). What unfortunately made news instead of the real issues is the interjection by the current managing director that the container where the ex-managing directors claimed they left vouchers was abandoned to the elements by the same people. Termites of course ! It is sheer mischief to draw a comparison between this and a notorious case of N6m alleged to have been eaten by monkeys at Kano Zoo or the N32m said to have been swallowed by snake in at the Benue Jamb Office.

Now, whither the facts about this uproar ? In 2015, the EFCC acting on petitions, investigated the NSITF and discovered massive looting to the tune of N69b. It consequently charged the former chairman of the board of the fund, Ngozi Olejeme and two other members, Aderemi Adegboyaga and R.U Uche representing NLC and NECA respectively to court. Others equally charged included the Deputy General Manager Finance, Henry Ekhasomi, General Manager Legal, Adebayo Aderibigbe.

 The office of the Auditor General of the Federation equally raised the red flag having discovered that the agency breached all financial regulations to the extent that it has no audited report for years. In 2017, following presidential assent, the Minister of Labour and Employment, set up an Administrative Panel of Inquiry led by K.C. Awotu, a chartered accountant and former Director of Finance at the Ministry. The Awotu Report submitted on July 18, 2018 made more damming revelations. About N30 billion was established to have been carted away in one instance, out of which N5 billion vanished without vouchers in one day! The internal audit mechanism, according to the report, broke down irretrievably and unable to check the massive fraud. It further noted that it was queer for non-Executive Directors to assume executive powers and turn themselves to executive directors. The Panel further made far-reaching recommendations for the reform of the agency. A statement by the Ministry of Labour on July 19, 2018, signed by Deputy Director, Press, Samuel Olowokere, informed thus: “When we said N5 billion was taken in one day, that’s not the only amount missing. Over N30billion cannot be accounted for and the members of the past board participated actively in the looting. We want to know how board members who are not part of the management found their way so deep to have participated in plundering of the agency.” Also, four management staff members were directed to proceed on compulsory leave. Though the matter is still in court, the EFCC has made recoveries which include 48 property worth billions of naira from Olejeme and has equally secured permanent forfeiture of the items. Various sums in cash have equally been recovered from other accused persons.

What then is the Senate Public Accounts Committee just wakened to probe? A crime that has variously been probed; some of the culprits standing trial, various degrees of punishments meted to others while varying recoveries made? Is it not a case of double jeopardy? Can an individual suffer another punishment over a crime already punished? Which vouchers is the Committee looking for when it was already established and reported that billions of naira disappeared from the fund without vouchers? Do the lawmakers think these indicted officers would not use cronies to vitiate the remaining incriminating evidence in a case committed in 2012/ 2013, long when the current managing director was not even a staff? As a matter of fact, what does the Financial Regulation say on the life of vouchers? The irony is that the incumbent management with credible high water mark in what it calls strategic reforms, is here made to look as having fingers in the pie.

Question therefore is whether this probe is in the public interest and is guided by facts or meant to generate the usual dusts that feather defined interest rather than the interest of the nation? Reason again is that it looks like some National Assembly members have shown very shallow knowledge of the NSITF in discharging oversight functions. Not quite long ago, the House of Representatives was hounding the agency over a so-called non-remitted operating surplus fund between 2013 and 2020. The House suddenly re-conceived the NSITF, a non-treasury funded agency with 1% contribution from employers to an internally generating revenue agency whose surplus must be returned to the federal treasury! The House thus, threw away the Employee Compensation mandate of ECA ACT 2010 which empowers the fund to use contributions funds to assist workers on the rainy days of accident, injury , infirmity at work or retirement! Good the House later backpedalled.

While the National Assembly is obligated to its constitutional oversight functions, a lee to encourage agencies whose management has shown commitment to the growth of the nation is important. 

In other words, any probe must be a piggyback on the ongoing reforms in the NSITF. The current management of the fund which is a year old has demonstrated it has all it takes to reposition the parastatal with over 5000 workers.

It is clearly a new day at the NSITF where the trail of the past is being effectively laid to rest under strategic reforms, building a wall to yesterday. With the approval by the Federal Executive Council for the digitisation of the operations of the fund, promoting accountability and transparency already buoyed by critical evaluation and right-placement of staff of the fund will take a notch higher. Unique, is that the current management team rather than being politicians, are technocrats who graduated up the ranks, without the political encumbrances associated with predecessors . Already, the time frame between complaints and compensation has been shut down from eternity it was, to 14 days and now 10 days! It even promises to narrow it the more with the introduction of a toll-free call centre within the next few months. How then does one further measure success than through the extent the fund has delivered on its core mandate - paying a total of 23,615 claims and compensation, worth N1.17b between June 2021 and June 2022. A giant step compared to the past! This, broken down comprises medical expenses, loss of productivity to employers, death and disability benefits, retirement benefits to disabled employees, among others.

Knowing full well that the primary focus of the agency is not just payment of compensation, rather prevention of work place mishaps- a healthy work place that enhances productivity, the fund has in one year given training to over 200 companies on occupational safety and health through support programmes across the six geo-political zones . It has further trained and certified over 60 of its staff members fund-wide on national examination aimed at making safety and health a culture in the world of work. The move into the informal sector where over 70 per cent of the Nigerian workers make daily livelihood is daring but remarkable. With a new department to formalise these regular workers and avail them the multiple benefits of the employee compensation, the NSITF is bound for upward swing.

*Nwachukwu, a journalist, wrote from Abuja