Senate Joint Committee on the Comprehensive Investigation into the Administration of Pensions in Nigeria, was again treated to another round of revelations detailing how the Pensions Reform Task Force Team spent N3.6bn of the police pensions fund within three months on the saddle.
Following his refusal to appear before it to defend himself against the allegations, the committee issued a warrant for arrest, ordering the Inspector-General of Police to produce the Chairman of the Task Team, Albdulrasheed Maina, at 10am on Friday.
The committee also summoned the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to appear before it on Friday to explain her role in the management of police pensions.
The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ibrahim Lamorde, was also invited to appear on Friday for his testimony.
The task force team took over the police pensions in June 2011 and had its mandate withdrawn in August after the Head of Service redeployed a substantive Director of Police Pensions.
Assistant Chief Accountant of the Police Pensions, Mr. Toyin Isola, while testifying before the committee on Thursday, described how the team led by Main, fraudulently spent the budgeted funds of the police pensions without recourse to financial rules and regulations.
He said the team “spent a whooping sum of N240m to conduct the biometric exercise to capture less than 20 retirees in the Diaspora and N220m was spent on capturing of local bio data.
“These are just part and not all of the activities carried out by the task team within three months of its tenure in police pension office, of which he it expended over N3.6bn within this short perod without any entry of such in account books.”
Isola noted that the claims of Maina that he saved billions of naira for the government had engaged in frivolous and uncontrolled spending without regard for financial regulation guiding all government expenditure.
He accused Maina of engaging the services of officials of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commissionand Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Matters Commission, whose name were in the payroll of the team and he used them to intimidate and harass people.
The committee was also told that about 24 security persons were hired by the team to provide security for the team’s Chairman to which N4.8m was paid during the period.
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