Pension Reform: Investigators get death threats •Task team recovers N180bn

Posted by admin Latest Politics Monday, March 26th, 2012

A cabal within the Federal Civil Service may have started frustrating the reform being carried out in the pension scheme in Nigeria amid death threats being sent to the Pension Reform Task Team chairman, Mr Abdullahi Maina and other members.

No fewer than 120 different individuals were said to have issued death treats to Maina and other investigators under him on the discoveries that the Pension Reform Task Team had made relating to alleged looting of the
pension funds running into almost N200 billion.

Sources within the task team disclosed to Nigerian Tribune that those sending death treats to most members were doing so through telephone calls, text messages and memos secretly dropped in their office at the Head of Service complex of the Federal Secretariat.

The faceless individuals behind the death threats were said to have taken extra steps trailing children of the Pension Reform Task Team to their different schools, taking their photographs and sending them to Maina to impress it on them that they had their kids under serious watch.

Nigerian Tribune could not immediately reach the task team chairman for confirmation, but sources close to his office affirmed that his office had formally reported the issue of death threat to security operatives for investigation.

Maina had lately faced the wrath of the Senate on the manner his committee had been going about exposing the huge corruption in the pension funds management, even as government officials who faced the Senate panel on pension alleged that he equally mismanaged the looted pension money so far recovered.

The Senate Committee on Pension had earlier called for Maina’s arrest on the allegation that he feigned sickness when he was summoned to clarify issues on the looted pension funds which his committee recovered from top civil servants managing the funds.

However, when he eventually faced the Senate panel to dispel reports about his abscondment, Maina opened a can of worms on the alleged mismanagement of the pension funds, and the efforts by the task force to recover some of the looted funds running into N200 billion.

Maina had told the Senate Committee on Pension that the task force had detected 71,135 fake pensioners to which a large chunk of pension funds had been paid, adding that the sum of N159 billion was traced to top government officials mostly in the Head of Service office and eventually recovered.

He equally disclosed that culprits in the administration of the pension funds had hired and registered area boys, school teachers, relations and acquaintances as pensioners and had paid huge sums of money into their accounts.

According to him, the Pension Reform Task Team should be rather commended for enabling the Federal Government to channel the sum of N70 billion into the 2012 budget from the backlog of recovered looted pension funds.

He also told the Senate that the task team, after weeding out ghost pensioners from government’s payroll, had been able to identify a total of 44,320 genuine pensioners who had never been enrolled as pensioners, but had been captured on the payroll, to enjoy the pensions which they had long been denied.

-Tribunewp_posts