Anambra Senatorial Election: Why I Won’t Contest – Ngige
Senator Chris Ngige, the minister of labour and employment, has disclosed that he would not abandon the national assignment bestowed him as a minister to contest Anambra central senatorial election.
The minister stated that he will not contest the election for both personal and official reasons stressing that the mission given to him by President Muhammadu Buhari require a season administrator like him to take carry out the job well.
Ngige made this statement while fielding questions from reporters at the national secretariat of the All Progressives Congress on January 13, Leadership reports.
He noted that despite the slow turn of the country’s economy, his ministry will work hard to fulfill its mandate on job creation.
He said: “I am not running because of official and personal reasons. The official reason being that I have an assignment given to me by Mr president as minister of Labour and Employment. As a matter of fact, the job is 60 percent more of employment generation than Labour. Labour matters constitute only about 40 percent which is about labour and Industrial relations, workers welfare and the rest of them all.
“Unemployment is a very big scourge, a very serious disease in Nigeria now and we need to fight it frontally. I have gone to that ministry, had briefings from relevant officers and top management officers and I feel that Nigeria is at a crossroads.
“The APC manifesto stipulates what we are going to do. We promised Nigerians that we were going to create jobs, we are going to create employment. And unfortunately for us, the economy has taken a serious down turn. So we need spartans like me to keep our flag flying and bring out water from the rock and that is what exactly we are going to do.”
On whether he had endorsed Senator Uche Ekwenife, who recently defected to APC, Ngige said: “As at the time Ekwunife came in, she was the only person from the APC that wanted to participate in the rerun. If she is the only person, I have no objection. But today, I’m told that two other people have shown interest. The party would do the normal thing and the normal thing the party is to do, is to run a primary, the question of baptizing of blessing now does not arise.”
Meanwhile,the minister of science technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, had said cassava can create over three million jobs if only 20 per cent of the commodity is used to replace wheat in producing bread.
Read more gists here: http://afrogalleria.page.tl