By Emma Ogbuehi
In a spirited attempt to absolve himself of any link with the recent re-arrest of the leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, Minister of Labour and Employment Chris Ngige has asked the organisation not to associate him with the development. The Minister’s action comes on the heels of allegations by the group mentioning him among those who played roles that gave out Kanu.
The minister’s rebuttal was contained in a statement by his Media Office on Saturday, in which described the statement by the IPOB spokesman, Emma Powerful, attempting to link him with the arrest of Kanu as deceitful, mischievous, malicious and wicked.
Ngige maintained that IPOB and its spokesperson know him (Ngige) very well as a man not given to equivocation or speaking from both sides of the mouth since his days as Governor in Anambra State.
The statement stressed that “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 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.
“The Minister, being somebody with long-standing experience in the public service, knows the bounds of his office and does not have the time to meddle into Foreign Affairs of Extradition and security matters that clearly fall within the mandate of the Nigerian Diplomatic Missions, national intelligence agencies.
“Ngige is neither the Minister of Police Affairs, Justice, Foreign Affairs nor the National Security Adviser, to start discussing issues of extradition or arrest of a fugitive outside Nigeria’s territory, which are clearly outside his mandate.”
