Senate 'Alleged' Attempt By Pensions Reforms Task Team To Bribe Its Members

Investigations into the administration of pensions in the country have assumed a new twist as the Joint Committee of the Senate on the Pensions Probe has alleged an attempt by the Pensions Reforms Task Team to bribe its members.

Chairman of the committee, Senator Aloysius Etok, said the Chairman of the team, Abdulrasheed Maina, had made several efforts to compromise the committee, but that he was rebuffed.

He said Maina got “big people to bribe the committee so that we will soft-pedal on him.” According to him, Maina has resorted to blackmail after he discovered that he could not compromise members of the committee.

Etok who spoke to one of our correspondents on the telephone on Wednesday was responding to allegations by the Task Team that the committee had been biased in its investigations.

Curiously, the PRTT in a statement on Wednesday clarified that the Senate committee did not demand bribe from it but alleged that the panel was unfair to it during the public hearing. It said the clarification became necessary to put the lie to reports in certain sections of the media that the Senate Committee on Establishment demanded a bribe of N16m for each of the panel members.

The statement by the PRTT spokesman, Hassan Salisu, said the team faced fierce attacks from the Senate committee during the public hearing “without any reason.” It read, “Yes, the PRTT has faced fierce attacks from the senate committee public hearing without any reason. In view of Nigerians’ ardent keenness in assessing this situation, this has resulted in the formation of wrong notion that the task force team might have refused to offer bribe to the senate committee.

“We believe that this wrong deduction might be the consequences of what is currently happening in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Chief Executive and the chairman of the House of Representatives Committee which compelled the public to read between the lines and erroneously draw wrong conclusions that the PRTT might have refused to bribe the senate committee.

“Hence, the pension task force dissociates itself from this rumours being peddled around.  In as much as we were cruelly and unfairly treated by the Senate adhoc Committee for doing the right thing for Nigeria, we believe that Nigerians  might have critically examined the events as they unfolded for them to draw this wrong conclusion of bribe offer.”

The committee had insisted that Maina had a case to answer in the manner he handled the reforms of the pensions administration, particularly during his stint with the Police Pensions. Officials of the Police Pensions had accused Maina of fraudulently spending N3.6bn within three months of working at the office.

Assistant Chief Accountant of the Police Pensions, Mr. Toyin Isola, while testifying before the committee had accused the team led by Maina of spending the budgeted funds of the police pensions without recourse to financial rules and regulations. He had said that the team “spent a whopping sum of N240m to conduct the biometric exercise to capture less than 20 retirees in the Diaspora and N220m was spent on capture of local bio data.

“These are just parts and not all of the activities carried out by the task team within three months of its tenure in police pensions office, of which it expended over N3.6bn within this short period without any entry of such in account books,” Isola told the panel.

The KPMG report which was commissioned by the Ministry of Finance to look into the books of the police pensions also indicted the PRTT of opening bank accounts for pension fund totalling N10bn with Fidelity Bank and United Bank of Africa without first getting the approval of the Accountant-General of the Federation as required by law. The Senate Joint Committee is relying on this evidence to call the PRTT to account for its activities in the Police Pensions Office.

Etok said the blackmail of the PRTT would not distract it from concluding the assignment given to it by the Senate. He said the allegation of bias by the PRTT was untrue, and challenged the team to produce evidence of bias by the committee.

He said, “The media is the watchdog of our assignment. We have not shown any sign of bias. We work according to our conscience. These boys in the task force have resorted to blackmail because we have refused to be compromised. Nigerians would judge us at the end of the day.”

PRTT had maintained that the committee was biased, noting that the committee had already passed judgment against it even before the commencement of the public hearing when it asked the Federal Government to dissolve the team. The Salisu’s statement added,”There is no fairness to the PRTT; it is as if the ultimate intention of the panel (senate committee) is to tarnish the hard earned integrity of the task team so as to pave way for the pension thieves to continue stealing pensioners’ funds.

“Though we agree that the PRTT suffered fierce attack and sentimental harassment by the senate committee and strongly feel that the senate committee will not be fair to us in the ongoing probe, it did not qualify anybody to make judgment that the senate committee demanded bribe.”