Former Chairman of the Pension Reform Task Team, PRTT,
Abdulrasheed Maina, has claimed that he is being haunted for stopping N5.32
billion, which he alleged, was being stolen monthly in the office of the Head
of Service and Police Pension office.
Maina said his media trial and framed up allegations were
part of efforts by ‘pension thieves’ to stop him from exposing them.
He urged President Muhammadu Buhari to thoroughly
investigate pending pension petitions.
Speaking through his aide, Olajide Fashikun in Kaduna on
Tuesday, Maina who has been on the run, said the presidential investigation was
imperative to expose the real pension thieves.
He alleged they were highly placed public office holders,
adding that such would bring succour to starving pensioners in the country.
Maina, who said his Task Team saved the country about N282
billion from June 2010 when it was constituted, revealed that, the presidential
investigation would also expose the sum of £6 million (about N3.3 billion)
stashed in accounts in London by 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 N5.32 billion
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.
“In the current media trial where all manners of stories
have been published, there have been a lot of distortion of facts and sometimes
outright blackmail, all in an attempt to paint the PRTT boss black.
“As soon as Maina was driven to exile before the coming of
PTAD, N35 billion was stolen in the Head of Service. The ICPC did not come out
with the report. How come nobody is talking about these monies? Fashikun asked.
“After the biometric exercise, there were 71,000 genuine
workers in the police pension office who needed N826 million to pay them unlike
N5.3 billion 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 N300 million 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 payroll. Bank officials were in cohort. Names of dead
pensioners were ‘exhumed’ from the dead and paid pension. Accounts were created
with fictitious names. The agents who do the multiple collection of these
monies from banks get 5 per cent of the volume collected. One of the folks
caught then by name Haruna Maigida was paid via three accounts in June 2011 the
sums of N7,783,891.68, N17,452,910.87 and N17,293,888.44. He confessed when the
EFCC officials arrested him that he got 5 per cent for pulling the cash.
“In petitions one of Teidi’s aide made to the EFCC and ICPC,
Mr. Teidi had said he paid the money to Senator Aloysius Etuk in foreign
currency and that the bribe was meant to prevent their prosecution. He told
investigators that he equally bribed Farida Waziri, former Chairman of the
EFCC. Why has the two anti-graft agencies not investigated this matter? Why are
they after the man who caught the ‘thieves’ and not the ‘thieves’?”
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 committee 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 N195 billion.
“Meanwhile, on 13th April 2016, former Kano governor,
Senator Kabiru Gaya, told The Sun Newspaper in an interview that the 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 frozes
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, office of
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 was 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, noting that an alleged 98 per cent of pensioners have been denied their
benefits since November, 2012.
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