NIPC, management at daggers drawn over alleged low morale

By Franca Ochigbo, AbujaFor members of staff of the Nigerian Investment Promotion Council (NIPC), the centre cannot hold again as the workers are in a long drawn battle with the management over irreconcilable differences.It would be recalled that the NIPC premises had been under lock and keys since 24th February as staff have been protesting the removal of the Executive Secretary, Yewande Sadiku.Besides, the NIPC boss was also accused of highhandedness, non-implementation of 17July 2020 agreement in breach and frustrating an inter-ministerial committee that was set up to resolve the myriads of establishment issues.The Chairman of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria, Yusuf Mustapha who spoke on behalf of staff and Union said the staff had agreed that the ES must go considering her inability to understand the mandate of investment promotion.The union further alleged that Sadiku had tampered with result of 2020 promotion exercise, double standard and deliberate tardiness on issue of staff welfare just as they cited the problem of poor understanding of public sector financial management leading to poor implementation of budgetary provisions.They also accused the Sadiku-led NIPC of allegedly wasting N800billion on foreign trips in the past four years.According to Mustapha, the management under Sadiku also breached the Procurement Act, the ICPC Acts by issuing contracts to Micheal Jacobs, an unregistered company that supplied substandard computer consumables to the Council to the tune of over N1. 7millionAlso worrisome, the Union stressed, was that the NIPC was yet to be registered at the Corporate Affairs Commission few years after it was established.However, the NIPC management in its reply denied almost all allegations by the Council Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria as the staff on Wednesday held a protest and shut the gates to the NIPC in Abuja, accusing the executive secretary of the agency, Yewande Sadiku, of executive felonies, mismanagement of fund among others.It also said some of the issues were never brought to its notice ahead of the protest.For the record, it should be noted that despite the resolution of virtually all the issues and continuous engagement with the Union and other stakeholders, the Union has issued four ultimatums to Management in the past six months, over issues that had either been resolved or had never been brought to Managements attention, a statement by the management said.In relation to the 2020 promotion exercise, the promotion examination was transparently conducted by the Public Service Institute of Nigeria (PSIN) with the full participation of relevant MDAs, including the Office of the Head of Service of the Federation, Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, the Federal Civil Service Commission and Federal Character Commission, the statement said.
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