Indications emerged yesterday that a fresh massive fraud of an alleged N18billion illegal transactions had been unearthed by the Pension Reform Task Force at the Police Pension Office (PPO).
A source close to the ministerial taskforce also confided in LEADERSHIP last night that the said N18billion pensioners fund under the custody of the Pensions Office was allegedly tampered with by a former Director of the PP0, who is now a Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs, Alhaji Abubakar Atiku Kigo and his aides.
But Kigo has been redeployed to the office of the Head of Office of the Federation (HOS) and will be resuming on March 30.
The source, who gave an insight into how the alleged fraud was perpetuated, said the action was allegedly effected through the Director of the PPO between 2008 and June 2011, using over 13, 874 cheque leaflets.
The source, who further disclosed that the need to investigate the status of the Pension Office, following the outcry of suffering pensioners, claimed that the collaborators drew as many as 30 cheques daily with over N250million withdrawn weekly by these officials with a cashier, Vicky, doing all the withdrawals.
But Kigo and other indicted officials had been granted administrative bail by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
The source, who decried the rot in pension administration in the country, added that those at the apex of civil service administration were behind the racket.
It would be recalled that following several complaints over pension difficulties, the former HOS, Prof. Oladapo Afolabi, had directed Abdulrasheed Maina -led Pension Reform Task Force to oversee the cleansing of the police pension fund.
But efforts to get Kigo’s reaction over the allegations were futile as text messages sent to him were not replied to while his phone was eventually switched off after several unanswered calls put through to him were ignored.
Meanwhile, a member of the Senate Joint Committee investigating the Pensions fraud, Senator Mohammed Sani Saleh, has said the committee is yet to receive documents promised by Maina over the allegation of N21 billion police pension fraud.
Saleh added that there was no truth to claims by Maina that he had presented the documents to the committee. He said this while speaking with journalists in Abuja yesterday.
He also said that contrary to Maina’s claim that he would produce cartons of documents, he stated that he (Maina) was not forthcoming with the documents as at the last time the committee met him.
SOURCE: Leadership Newspaper, 22 March 2012. http://www.leadership.ng/nga/
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