SAN FRANCISCO, November 01, (THEWILL) –Â Former chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reform Team (PTPT), Abdulrasheed Maina, indicted over diversion of public funds worth billions of naira, has broken silence on the allegations of fraud levelled against him.
THEWILL recalls that Maina has been declared as a fugitive by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) four years ago as he fled trial for his corruption case.
However, Maina was reinstated back into service, despite having a hanging case of corruption on his neck, and secretly given an appointment as the head of a directorate in the Interior Ministry which is led by Nigeria’s Minister of Interior, Abdulrahman Dambazau.
Apparently displeased by the action, President Muhammadu Buhari ordered his immediate disengagement on Monday, October 23 and ordered full investigation into his reinstatement.
Reacting to the allegations, Maina, whose whereabouts have been unknown since his dismissal from the civil service, insisted that he is a victim of corruption fighting back.
Speaking through Olajide Fashikun, his media aide in Kaduna on Tuesday, October 31, Maina said the investigation ordered by President Buhari will expose those involved in pension fraud.
“In the current media trial where all manners of stories have been published, there has been a lot of distortion of facts and sometimes outright blackmail, all in an attempt to paint Maina black like Lucifer,” he said.
“After the biometric exercise, there were 71,000 genuine workers in the police pension office who needed N826million to pay them unlike N5.3billion appropriated for them annually. They were pocketing N4.2billion yearly.
“They devised several ingenious ways to pull these cash out. They pulled out an average of N300million 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’ and people were paid. Accounts were created with fictitious names.
“Between the office of the head of service and the police pension office, a leakage of N5.32 billion per month was stopped. This is what civil servants steal monthly in the two offices out of the 99 pension offices in the country.
“Forty-three persons were arrested and handed over to the EFCC to prosecute while 222 houses were seized from them. After Maina was driven into exile, N35billion was stolen in the office of the head of the service.
“There has been a lot of deliberate cover-up in a well-written script to give Maina a bad name. 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 Nigerians that he stole N195billion.
“Maina was just a victim of a 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 newspapers.”
