Institutions Must Strive to Build Public Trust, Confidence, Says NSITF MD Faleye

Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja

Managing Director/Chief Executive, Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF), Oluwaseun Faleye has said that building institutional trust and public confidence is key business asset.

A statement signed by the Deputy General Manager Corporate Affairs Alex Mede quoted Faleye as having said that one of the greatest challenges of governance is not merely policy design but public confidence.

Faleye spoke at the 2026 Law Week of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Gwagwalada Branch in Abuja, Monday.

The NSITF MD said the future of effective governance in Nigeria depends not only on laws being enacted, but on institutions being strengthened to deliver on their legal obligations.

“For those of us entrusted with public responsibility, service must mean more than occupying office. It must mean using institutions to protect the vulnerable, to uphold fairness, and to leave systems better than we met them.

“For the Bar, it means defending the integrity of law and ensuring that justice remains accessible, principled, and alive.

“For institutions like NSITF, it means ensuring that social protection is not treated as charity. but as a lawful and necessary pillar of national development.

“For the nation, it means recognizing that sustainable progress is impossible where labour is unprotected, where institutions are weak, and where trust is eroded”, he submitted.

Faleye said he believes that one of the most important tasks before the nation is to bridge the distance between legal rights and lived realities.

“Our laws must work for the worker. Our institutions must work for the citizen. And our governance culture must work for the public good”.

He said, “Across many societies, and certainly within ours, one of the greatest challenges of governance is not merely policy design but public confidence.

“Citizens want to know that laws will not remain on paper. Workers want to know that statutory protections will function when tested. Employers want clarity, fairness, and predictability.

“And institutions must earn the confidence of all sides through competence, consistency, and credibility. That is why institutional trust is such an important national question”.

Faleye noted that, “This gathering is not only a celebration. It is also a moment of reflection. A gathering like this brings together the conscience of the legal profession, the custodians of justice, and men and women whose daily work shapes the relationship between the citizen and the state.

“It reminds us that institutions do not become strong merely because they are created by law. They become strong when they are led with purpose, administered with integrity, and trusted by the people they were established to serve”.

According to the MD, “That is why this recognition is meaningful to me. It is not simply about an individual. It is a recognition of an idea: that public institutions can work; that reform is possible; that service can still be honourable; and that government agencies can be instruments of justice, protection, and human dignity”.

He reiterated that, “At the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund, this conviction drives our work every day. The mandate of the NSITF, through the Employees’ Compensation Scheme, is rooted in a simple but powerful principle: that no worker who suffers injury, disease, disability, or death in the course of employment should be left alone to bear that burden. That principle is both legal and moral.

“It is legal because it is established under the Employees’ Compensation Act. It is moral because it speaks to the kind of society we must build, one in which work is not separated from dignity, and productivity is not detached from protection.

“At NSITF, we understand that trust is not demanded, it is built. It is built claim by claim, process by process, reform by reform, and decision by decision”.

Speaking further, the MD lamented that most times public discourse celebrates enterprise, Investment, growth, and productivity without giving equal attention to the human beings whose labour sustains them.”