MINISTER of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, has distanced himself from reports linking him to the re-arrest and repatriation of the leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu.
In a statement issued by his Media Office in Abuja, today, Ngige said as the chief labour officer, he lacked the time to involve himself in security and diplomatic issues.
He said the plot and apprehension of Kanu was clearly within the mandate of the Nigerian Security and National Intelligence Agencies.
The minister maintained that IPOB and its spokesperson know him (Ngige) very well as a man who calls “a spade a spade” and has no room for “equivocation or speaking from both sides of the mouth” since his days as the Governor of Anambra State.
The statement read: “Ngige is occupied, involved and engrossed with his duties as the Labour and Employment Minister, member of Federal Cabinet Committee for Economic Recovery and member of the Economic Sustainability Committee constituted by President Muhammadu Buhari, which is headed by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, with the mandate to tackle the challenges and fallouts of COVID-19 and the post-COVID-19 era.
“It is therefore unthinkable that somebody with grey matter in his brain, except if he is hallucinating like the IPOB spokesman, could accuse a very busy Minister like Senator Ngige of being part of a ‘conspiracy’ for the arrest of Nnamdi Kanu.”
