The last has definitely not been heard of the pension scam that recently hit the country as the Chairman of the Pension Reform Task Team (PRTT), Dr. Abdulrasheed Maina, during an interview with journalists yesterday in Abuja, disclosed that it had found another N20 billion stolen pension funds. Maina said the funds were hidden in some dormant accounts in some banks. However, he said no reports have been made to the authorities concerned because investigations were still ongoing.
His words: “Recently, we discovered some money hidden in other accounts, apart from the N221 billion we have recovered and sent to the government… I did not disclose this earlier because we are still under investigation. The money is over N20 billion.
“The amount has been hidden in some accounts that are dormant for over three years… As soon as we get through with our investigation, we will report to the Minister of Finance to instruct the Accountant-General to move the money” he said.
Maina also expressed sadness that the Senate Joint Committee on Establishment and Public Service and States and Local Governments Administration, was being misled into maligning the task team. He continues: “Our detractors thought we have an account and we are keeping money.
We only go to the bank, see account balance and write what we have observed. We have all the security agencies in our midst… “We have this coordination but people don’t know. They give false information to the Senate Committee and they sit down on false information without verifying… If you are given an assignment as a committee, I feel the first person you will look for is the person in charge of the team.
“We are the depository of the database of the civil service, we ought to have been invited first so that we can go round the country with the committee investigating management of pension fund but nobody invited us” he said.
He then accused corrupt persons within the system, who were feeding fat through the loopholes, as the ones fighting hard to make sure that the team was discredited: “They want to distract us. It is not about anything but corruption fighting back,” he said.
Source: theheraldng.com
