Chairman/Chief Executive Officer of Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, has narrated how gunmen chased staff of the commission from office on the orders of the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Ali Pantami.
Dabiri-Erewa made this known while highlighting the challenges of NIDCOM since establishment.
She said her commission no longer had a space to work from after Pantami ordered gunmen to throw them out from an office the Nigeria Communication Commission gave to them.
In a video posted on the website of NIDCOM and tweeted by Dabiri-Erewa on Sunday, she said, “The office we got, given to us by NCC but we were actually driven away by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Mr Isa Pantami, within two days, they drove us out with guns and what happened? The place was given to us by NCC.
“You know we all help each other, NCC as an agency of government, said there is a place you can use to settle in, and just as we settled in, I was in Ethiopia when I got a call. I thought that it was a joke. I came back from Ethiopia on Thursday, this happened on Tuesday, by Friday when I went to the office, guns, armed men had taken over the place. I thought it was a joke, but here is the thing, I’m a government employee, so is he. It’s a government business.
“I have complained officially but we let it be. He wants the place, let him take it. That place is still there, a whole floor is still vacant. As I speak with you, all our items are locked up. I don’t have computer, I don’t have printers, everything has been locked up.
“So after COVID-19, we are hoping that we can get a space and move in. These things locked are personal printers, personal laptops of our very dedicated staff because when you are just starting a lot of things are not there.”
In his reaction to the allegation in a statement on Sunday, the NCC spokesman, Dr Henry Nkemadu, said Pantami could not have ordered the eviction of the commission staff, adding that the NCC had not withdrawn the offer for the commission to use a space in its complex.
He said, “The fifth floor allocated to NIDCOM had to be used to accommodate other departments from the NCC headquarters to ease congestion.
“The NCC has not withdrawn the offer but had hiccups arising from the preparation for the visit of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) to inaugurate the building other projects relating to the mandate of government.”
But NIDCOM in a statement on Sunday, by its spokesman, Abdulrahman Balogun, dismissed the NCC claims, noting that over 40 office equipment belonging to its staff were carted away from the NCC building shortly after it was evicted.
The missing items, it said, include two units of single face data ports; 24 port patch panel; Mikrotik RB 750G router; Mikrotik cloud router switch; two Headsets with microphones; two Digital PABX; 4u Server racks; Patch cables; HP desk jet 1012 all in one printer, files and documents.
