Team recovers N151b  embezzled pension funds

EFCC-LOGOTHE Presidential Task Team on Pension Reform has recovered about N151 billion of embezzled funds and assets of the Federal Government since it was set up in 2010. Most of these funds were recovered from the pension office at the Office of the Head of Service.

The Chairman of the Task Team, Mr. Abdulrasheed Maina, disclosed this yesterday in Abuja, at a meeting with the Acting Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC), Ekpo Nta, urging the commission for closer ties so that all corrupt cases could be prosecuted.

Maina said that the success was achieved through the system review scheme designed by his team of men from ICPC, EFCC, Customs, Immigration and other relevant security agencies that make up the team. According to him, if such monumental fraud could be going on at the Head of Service Office alone, then the overall amount of fraud that would be taking place in other pension offices nationwide would be monumental, noting that there were 42 pension offices in the country.

He added that the robust database of pensioners built by the team as well as the e-payment system designed by the team really helped a great deal in discovering about 71,133 ghost pensioners within the system, for whom the “cartel” behind the fraud had been collecting government money for years.

Maina explained that a figure of 258,000 pensioners was submitted to the Budget Office by the “cartel” in the Head of Service pension office; for whom N5 billion was released monthly. Of the N5 billion, the task team, after removing the ghost pensioners, only needs N1.7 billion to pay the 70,657 genuine pensioners.

According to him, right now, only this amount is requested from the pension office to pay those who had hitherto been benefiting from the huge fraud. Some of them threatened the task team staff, he said.

He also revealed that about 44,320 retired persons were discovered never to have been paid their pension. Since 1968 and 1975, these people, he said, were brought on board and they now enjoy their pension. He also disclosed that during the system review of the task team, some 66 fake accounts were discovered; while in another instance, about 555 accounts were discovered under the name of only one person in a particular bank. Maina expressed belief that this was done in connivance with the bank management.

“The pension payment of N5 billion monthly was reduced to N825 million monthly. Consequently, the team has stopped the large-scale scam of N4.25 billion monthly. The team got to the root of the pension scam and cracked down the fraudulent pension cartel spread around the country, tracing the stolen pension funds through their bank accounts. The task team, in conjunction with the EFCC recovered about N35 billion and N15 billion worth of property from very few corrupt government officials in the office of the Head of Service pension department,” Maina said.

At the Police Pension Office, the team also discovered some fraud that led to the reduction of their monthly delivery from the Budget Office from N1.5 billion, to N500 million. An idle fund of N28 billion was also discovered and is to be returned to the Budget Office. According to him, the government spends between N400 million to N900 million yearly on the pension offices for verifications.

Maina said that the team had designed a smartcard solution that had cut this expenditure and made the exercise very convenient for the pensioners, who could do the verification without having to travel around the country thereby risking their lives.

With the amount of funds recovered from the Head of Service pension department and the Police pension office, Maina believes that if the same exercise is to be carried out in the other 40 pension offices across the country, such funds could be channeled towards the transformation of the country. He added that the contributory pension system must have been introduced by government because with the amount being paid monthly to pension offices, it must have projected that it was not sustainable in the years to come.

However, having made such recoveries, Maina believes that the government should be able to fully fund the pension even in the future if the tempo against fraud in pension offices is sustained. He said that sensitisation would begin in ministries, departments and agencies, to assure workers that their pensions were secured so that they would have no reason to engage in fraud.

In response, the ICPC chief commended the team for a job well done and promised that the outcome of the intervention would be made public. He attributed the success to inter-agency collaboration and pointed out that the ICPC was also planning a system review in such a way as to fight corruption to prevent it rather than merely prosecuting it.

Earlier, while speaking at a meeting with the President of Computer Forensics Institute of Nigeria, Dr. Peter Olayiwola, Ekpo noted that system review would dry up the sources that lead to corrupt acts. He said that the agency would fight corruption with technology, forensics especially.