NIGERIAN PENSIONERS DILEMMA: AN 'OGA AT THE TOP' THIEVES

When I watched a video clip of Nigerian pensioners queuing inside the rain in order to get their entitlement, which was not even there! I Shed tears for my country. The pensioners were treated with dignity in western world, they refer to them as senior citizens and they don’t even blink eyes before their entitlements were paid into their bank accounts.

What is really wrong with us in Nigeria? Is it bureaucratic or wickedness on the part of the officials!   How can someone put in 35 years meritorious service and after the retirement, the Oga at the Top’ would still steal the meagre pensions that belongs to them? What kind of a country are we living in?

 According to the pension union, names of many pensioners have been deleted from the pension payroll since 2002 while efforts to put their names back were routinely frustrated.

The union further averred that the office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, responsible for the payment of pension of federal retirees as well as remitting statutory contributions from the Federal Government to state pensioners, was responsible for most of the scams experienced with the pension fund.

 The Senator Aloysious Etok-led Senate Joint Committee on Public Service and Establishment and States and Local Government Administration who investigated the alleged mismanagement of the funds, observed what it described as 'syndicated and institutionalised corruption, fraud and embezzlement in the management of pension funds in the country'.

They made known that From 2005 to 2011, top government officials in charge of pension funds in the country stole N273.9 billion out of the total sum of N1.025 trillion received as pension funds by the various pension offices and boards within the period; only N751.4 billion was expended, with N273.9 billion looted.

 Also out of the N213.3 billion pension funds received by the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation, only N154.6 billion was disbursed; while the Millitary Pension Board disbursed only N294bn out of the N317.6bn it received.

 It further revealed that the Customs, Immigration and Prisons Pension Office paid only N57.4bn out of the N85.2bn released to it; the Department of State Service Pension Office, N9.4bn out of N34.7bn; and the Police Pension Office, N88.2bn out of N131.4bn.

Furthermore, out of the N176.4bn received by other parastatals as pension funds, only N100.6bn was expended; while only N46.9bn was spent out of the N55.8bn released for the payment of retirees of universities across the nation.

 It would be recalled that the former Head of Service of Oyo state  , Kudirat Adeleke, and 10 others were on Thursday, November 7, 2013, arraigned by the EFCC on a 213-count charge of conspiracy, obtaining money through false pretence and forgery that associated with N5.6 billion pension scam in the state. The affected property owners were Muili Aderemi, Iyabo Giwa, Oguntayo Banji, Adebiyi Olasumbo, Adeleke Iyabo, Adeduntan Johnson, Kareem Rasheed and two companies – Fimhab Nigeria Limited and Dumath Investment and Services Nigeria Ltd. The question i will love to ask is: What is the outcome of this particular case?

On April 8, 2014, This Day newspapers revealed that The Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) has uncovered N1 billion missing from the corporation’s pension funds over a period of three years; the fraud was discovered following the result of an internal investigation conducted by the rail management into the   pension funds.

It was learnt that the NRC Managing Director, Adeseyi Sijuwade, has forwarded the report of the enquiry, the names of the suspected culprits and recommendations on how to recover the funds from them   to the Chairman of the Railway Board, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur.

“It was discovered that through acts of fraud, financial recklessness, misappropriation and conspiracy, the said sum was diverted by some officials of the corporation,” the source said.

With this attitude, how then will a retiree ever get what belong to them?

According to Investigators in Nigeria, they have traced stolen pension funds to well over 73,000 phoney bank accounts opened by corrupt officials of two federal pension departments.

They include a Permanent Secretary Atiku Abubakar Kigo and top senior officers in the Federal Civil Service, Esai Abubakar; Ahmed Inuwa Wada; John Yakubu Yusufu; Mrs Veronica Ulonma Onyegbula; and Sani Habila Zira.

Mrs Chidi was arrested at the Sheraton Hotel Abuja having gone into hiding following arrests of some of her partners in crime. A breakdown of the cash in her bank account showed that she has $3.3 million in local currency and $2m in a domiciliary account.

Other civil servants in Mrs Chidi’s syndicate include Danjuma Bako-Wasa, Luke Eloanyi, M.A. Abdalla,

Aliyu Bello and Ms Grace Francis. EFCC investigators uncovered that Bako-Wasa operated a different bank account using the alias Haruna Megida.

It was also discovered that in less than a year, Bako-Wasa allegedly paid $140,000 into one bank account just as $53,000 was discovered in a separate account traced to him. Similarly, the EFCC traced $80,000 to Ms. Francis’ account while Eloanyi, a confidential secretary, has $87,000 stored in his account. The EFCC disclosed that in one instance, 554 ghost pensioners drew pensions from one bank account.

The Head of the task force, Abdulrasheed Maina was found to have spent $1.6 million on a biometric exercise and sponsoring 85 officials on a foreign trip to verify less than 20 retirees living overseas.

Another $1.5 million was spent on local bio data to verify the same pensioners. Maina is also accused of depositing huge pension funds into the bank account of his younger brother with the account attracting a monthly interest of $667,000.

The crimes committed by the chairman of the Pension Task Team, Mr Abdulrasheed Maina and all members of his team, according to the Senator Aloysious Etok-led committee, include: illegal contract splitting and award to the tune of N1.8bn; spending N1.6bn as running cost of the police pension instead of N80 million appropriated; spending N830.8 million purportedly for the payment of June 2010 pension using cheques instead of e-payment system; dubious enrolment of pensioners into the payroll, 49,395; spending N234 million on the already 90 percent completed biometric capturing with no files, data and documents from the pension department; spending N17 million on the biometric verification of less than 30 pensioners in Diaspora without recourse to the Nigerian Embassy/High Commission responsible for such.

The committee recommended that all members of the be arrested and prosecuted by the police for "the crimes of embezzlement, fraud, misappropriation, misapplication, illegal virements, contract splitting, award of contracts to non-existing companies, outright stealing of police pension funds, among others"

But according to Nigeria factors, all these thieves are now walking free in our corrupt society, and very soon they will be campaign for political offices, while the government will soon be awarding them with the highest honour of the land CFR,GCFR,GCON.  What a country.