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| Former Chairman of Pension Reform, Abdulrasheed Maina |
Embattled former Chairman
of the Pension Reform Task Team (PRTT), Abdulrasheed Maina, has said that, he
is being haunted for stopping N5.32bn which he alleged was being stolen monthly
in the office of the Head of Service and Police Pension office alone.
Maina said, his media
trial and framed up allegations were part of efforts by ‘pension thieves’ to
stop him from exposing them, which is why he asked President Muhammadu Buhari
to thoroughly investigate pending pension petitions, especially as Senator Kabiru
Gaya said in an interview that, that the N195bn which he (Maina) was accused of
stealing is in the TSA account.
Speaking through his aide,
Olajide Fashikun in Kaduna on Tuesday, Maina who has been on the run said the
presidential investigation is imperative to expose the real pension thieves,
some of whom he alleged, are highly placed public office holders, adding that
such will bring respite to starving pensioners.
Maina, who said his Task
Team saved the country about N282bn from June 2010, when it was constituted,
revealed that, the presidential investigation will also expose the sum of six
million pounds stashed in accounts in London and the top government
functionaries in different offices who are drawing the interest on the
accounts.
According to him, “between
the Head of Service and the Police Pension office, the two places PRTT worked,
a leakage of N5.32billion was stopped per month. This is what civil servants
steal monthly in the two offices out of the 99 pension offices in the country.
43 persons were arrested and handed over to the EFCC to prosecute while 222
houses were seized from them.
“As soon as Maina was
driven to exile before the coming of the PTAD, N35billion was stolen in the
Head of Service. The ICPC did not come out with the report. How come no body is
talking about these monies? Fashikun asked.
“In the current media
trial where all manners of stories have been published, there has been a lot of
distortion of facts and sometimes outright blackmail, all in an attempt to
paint the PRTT boss black like Lucifer”.
“After the biometric
exercise, there were 71,000 genuine workers in the police pension office who
needed N826million to pay them unlike N5.3billion appropriated for them
annually. They were pocketing N4.2billion yearly. They devised several
ingenious ways to pull these cash out. They pull out an average of N300million
daily Monday to Friday. There are bank alerts to substantiate these assertions.
“There is a particular
person who has 69 cloned versions of his name on the pay roll. Bank officials
were in cohort. Names of dead pensioners were ‘exhumed’ from the dead and paid
pension. Accounts were created with fictitious names.”
Speaking further, Maina’s
aide stressed “there has been a lot of deliberate cover in a well written
script to give Maina a bad name. Some of those who worked in the PRTT do
‘kabu-kabu’ to augment their survival. They were severely starved of funds,
Maina’s PRTT was a clog in the wheel of so many who were looting the
pensioner’s funds.
“Maina’s PRTT was brought
in to sanitise a very corrupt pension system. It was the success of his pension
system in the Ministry of Interior that brought him to the PRTT. Emerging
evidence has shown that Maina is just a victim of corruption fighting back.
“The then Senate Committee
in a bid to crucify Maina did the hatchet job, when they told the Nigerians
that, he stole N195billion. Meanwhile, on 13th April 2016, former Kano Governor,
Senator Kabiru Gaya, told The Sun newspaper in an interview that that
money was never missing. So, why is he being tried for the money that is now
confirmed not missing? According to the structure of the task force, Maina like
none of them therein never had access to the pension fund and could never have
taken one Naira lest over N2 billion.
“Former finance minister,
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala during a Senate meeting said that Maina had no contact with
funds and revealed how she froze the account where the monies recovered by
Maina’s committee was kept and how she transferred the funds to the CBN. So,
why will the EFCC continue to hound a man for an offence which they know he is
innocent of? Maina was only the head of the team which comprised of EFCC, ICPC,
DSS, NIA, office of Accountant General, Auditor General, Public Complaints
Commission etc. He was the only civilian in the Task Team.
“Maina was just a victim
of high power play of some powerful individuals in high places. So, for three
years, Maina suffered ‘media trial’, where he has found guilty several times on
the pages of newspaper.
“Despite the several facts
presented before the Senate committee during the hearing, the committee chose
to ignore the facts, instead, they threatened the then President Goodluck
Jonathan, following which Maina was shot with five bullets wounds on the side
glass of the bullet proof car Jonathan gave him”, he said.
Mr. Maina said he had
“verifiable” evidence the federal pension scheme was returning to “the looting
era” which his team set out to end, with an alleged 98% of pensioners denied
their benefits since November, 2012.
Source: The Nation
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