Date: 2016-09-07

THE leadership crisis rocking Michael Imoudu National Institute of Labour Studies, MINILS, has deepened as organised labour has petitioned President Muhammadu Buhari, accusing the institute's acting Director General, Alhaji S. I. Alabi, of age falsification.

EFCC operatives Labour, in the petition, is also calling for an administrative panel of inquiry to look into the administration of MINILS in the last nine years, alleging unethical practices and fraud. The institute has been enmeshed in leadership crisis, following the appointment of Alabi as acting DG, ahead of two of his seniors by the former DG, Dr. John Olarewaju.

Meanwhile, efforts by Vanguard to get the reaction of the acting DG in the last one month proved abortive. Similarly, top officials of the institute refused to speak on the several allegations of unethical practices against the management of the nation's foremost labour institute.

However, the petition by Senior Staff Association of Universities, Teaching Hospitals, Research Institutes, and Associated Institutions, SSAUTHRIAI, copied the Head of Service, Economic and Financial Crime Commission, EFCC, leadership of Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, and Trade Union Congress of Nigeria, TUC, among others, called for his immediate retirement.

The union, in the petition by its General Secretary, M. O. Makinde, entitled Falsification of age, by Alhaji S. I Alabi, pleaded that no staff of the Ministry of Labour and Employment should be included in the panel, for justice to be done in the matter. Labour recalled that it had earlier, through SSAUTHRIAI, kicked against the perceived "illegal appointment by the erstwhile Director General of the institute, Dr. John Olarewaju, because the appointment did not follow due process."

SSAUTHRIAI, which attached the staff list of MINISL to the petition, claimed that when MINILS, migrated to IPPIS, the age of the acting DG was altered to 1957, adding that it could be the reason he had been captured to retire in 2017. "By simple arithmetic and going by his date of birth of October 1955, he was due for retirement in the year 2015," the union stated.