Supper Rich Civil Servants

Astonishing levels of greed in the civil service continue to ruin Nigeria, leaving perpetrators with bank balances and property portfolios akin to those of Russian oligarchs. Here are their tricks

Some billionaire civil servants

From a distance, it seemed like a big fight was about to break out. A gaggle of young men, most of them in clothes they wore to bed the previous night, stood at an Abuja newspaper stand last Wednesday. Voices rose and fell. Hands went up and down, as each man tried to get his view across. On many of the faces, shock, anger and resignation were boldly written. That was hardly surprising, given that most of them were either unemployed or under-employed.

They had come to read newspapers, not buy. Even if they desired to buy, their economic condition would not let them. They are members of what the public calls “free readers association.’’ But the subject of discussion was not their economic condition, but a news item they had read in the papers of that day. It provoked a debate over whether an individual could exhaust N2bn in a lifetime, even if he was spending N50,000 daily.

The animated discussion was motivated by the story reported by all newspapers that day on the development on the dramatic theft of billions of naira in pension funds by those charged with its administration. The previous day, Justice Mohammed Talba of an Abuja High Court had granted bail to the Permanent Secretary in the Office of the Head of Service of the Federation, Abubakar Kigo, Esai Abubakar; Ahmed Wada, John Yusufu, Veronica Onyegbula and Sani Zirra, who were arraigned by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, on charges of alleged complicity in the illegal diversion of N32.8 bn from the Nigeria Police Pension Funds on 29 March. The EFCC alleges that between January 2009 and June 2011, the accused persons, all public servants, diverted the sum of N14.5bn from the Police Pension Funds domiciled in First Bank of Nigeria plc.

They are also accused of stealing N8.9bn between January and December 2009; N4.7bn between January 2010 and February 2011; N858.3m between February 2011 and June 2011; N656.5m on or about January 31, 2011; N462.9m on or about March 24, 2009; and N407.3m on or about December 14, 2010 and N400.2m on or about December 30, 2010; N18m between February 2011 and June 2011; N8.9bn between January 2009 and December 2009; and N4.7bn between January 2010 and February 2011, among others.

The reported figures and the information that the EFCC found the sum of N2 billion in Kigo’s bedroom left the free readers stupefied. Like Kigo, Sani Teidi Shuaibu, former Director of Pensions Department, Office of the HOCSF, is also alleged to have fattened himself on pension funds. The EFCC claimed to have found N1billion in cold cash in his residence. Shaibu, is facing prosecution for allegedly stealing N4.56 from the pension funds. He is being tried alongside Phina Chidi, Aliyu Bello, Abdullahi Omeiza, Garba Abdullahi Tahir and Emmanuel Olanipekun, all former staff of the of his office.

Aside from the cash, the anti-graft agency has also uncovered various bank accounts heaving with allegedly stolen funds. Some of these were opened in fictitious names. All the accounts that were successfully identified and linked to the two men have been frozen. About three weeks ago, EFCC also obtained an interim court forfeiture order to take over some assets belonging to Shuaibu over suspicions that they were proceeds of corruption.

These include houses in choice areas of Abuja and Lokoja, a string of petrol stations and companies.

Until the searchlights of scrutiny were beamed on these persons by the Abdulrasheed Maina-led Pension Reform Task Force, only a few could imagine the wealth in the hands of some civil servants.

The ongoing probe into the administration of pension funds by the Senate Joint Committee on Establishment, Public Service and States and Local Governments has also been revealing on how government officials saddled with the administration of pension in the country have been gobbling up such.

While appearing before the committee, Isa Sali, Head of Civil Service of the Federation, HOCSF, and two of his predecessors confirmed that top civil servants have been robbing retirees. Steve Oronsaye, HOCSF from June 2009 to November 2010, revealed that the real corruption in the administration of pension in the country was being carried out by top officials of the Accounts Department in the HOCSF office through falsification of documents. “The data was corrupted there. We later discovered that 71,000 pensioners, out of the 141,000 on the pay roll, were genuine,” he told the committee. Sali corroborated this by also confirming to the committee that six civil servants had stolen N24 billion out of the police pension fund.

But it was Maina, Chairman of the Pension Reform Task Force set up by Oronsaye in 2010, who gave the most vivid accounts of the schemes Teidi, Kigo and others have been using to cream off the pension funds. Maina told the committee that the Task Force had, through biometric verifications, reduced the number of pensioners on the payroll of Federal government to 70,658 from 141,790. The new figure, he said, did not include 44,320 genuine and eligible pensioners, some of whom retired as far back as 1968 but were captured by the team for the first time during the biometric exercise.

He claimed that the Task Force team was able to save the Federal Government N1.3 billion in monthly payments through the reduction. Maina said his team also found out that though the HOS has an official figure of 141,790 on its payroll, the actual number of pensioners at the Budget Office was 258,000. Giving an insight into how the fraud was perpetrated, Maina said the task force discovered that some workers in the pension department of the office of HOS have designed a method putting names of fake retired primary school teachers in the pension payroll. This, he explained, is with the understanding that when the purported retirees receive the payments, they deducted 10 per cent of the amount as their own share and returned the rest to members of the cartel. “So many primary school teachers were used as conduit pipes to siphon pension funds. For instance, a primary school teacher in Kebbi was paid N3mn each month and he takes 10 per cent and refunds the rest to the pension staff,” revealed Maina, who added that about 32 staff of HOCSF office have been confirmed to be involved in the practice. The same cartel, he added, has another arrangement with officials of the Nigeria Union of Pensioners, NUP, for stealing from the pension pot. He said the task force discovered a sudden, but unexplained increase of deductions of monthly check off payments to NUP from N15 million over N2 billion. Further investigations, he said, revealed that the overpayments were being transferred to the fraudulent 32 staffers at the office of the HOS, who are currently facing prosecution.