More facts have emerged on how the Senator Aloysious Etuk-led Senate Probe Committee was entangled in bribery scandal with Pension Reform Task Team (PRTT).
This is as the former Chairman of the disbanded task team, Abdul Maina, in this interview chal­lenged the Etuk-led Appropria­tion Committee in the Senate to make bold to absolve itself from the pension saga. He also insists that he did not misappropriate or pocket any pension money.
Excepts:
Current status in the civil service.
No, I have not retired, I am still in the Federal Civil Service as far as the Nigerian Con­stitution and courts are concerned. The offices concerned have refused to abide by the Federal High Court decision of April 2013 (suit no FH/ ABJ/CS/65/20B) so I still await when Nigeria will work through the Rule of Law for me to have my office back as a civil servant.
You should also note that the ille­gal “dismissal” process was faulted by the judgment of a high court. The case was in court and all parties were asked to stay action, but the then Head of Service, Sali, for his personal interest, decided to ignore the fact that the case was in court and went ahead to create a kangaroo process that lasted one day to dismiss a directorate level staff. Not even a cleaner could be dismissed in one month. No, I am not retired and I am still a civil servant. My posting is in the Ministry of Interior/ Office of Head of Service of the Federation.
Your battle with the Senate on missing pension money.
To correct you, I never ever had a running battle with the Nigerian Senate over missing pension money. I have the greatest respect for the Senate, and I say this over and again that I have role models, uncles, in-laws in the Senate. Yes, I had a running battle with Senator Aloysious Etuk for his quest to stop the Pension Task Team from stopping leakages in the financial system, from causing the arrest and prosecution of alleged pension thieves and from stopping Etuk and others from continually sucking pensioners funds. He lied and convinced the Senate into believing that I refused to honour his invitations.
I had on many occasions and I am still challenging Senator Aloy­sious Etuk and his Pension Probe Committee to show Nigerians via documents where Maina or his Pen­sion Reform Task Team took N195 billion they alleged were stolen by the task team under my leadership.
Who appropriated the funds, to which government department the funds were appropriated, who was the signatory to the account, who was the accounting officer, which bank was the N195 billion kept, if and how Maina or the task team had any contact with such N195 billion. Nigerians are not stupid as to buy this hullabaloo.
If Senator Etuk fails to produce any such documents to show the Nigerian public that I, Maina, and or my led Pension Reform Task Team stole, caused to be stolen, or had any contact with the said N195 billion, then Senator Etuk should resign and that means he lied not only to his committee members but to the entire Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Etuk should apologise to his constituency and to the generality of Nigerians for lying and the rest will be between him and the Almighty.
I urge Etuk to learn a lesson from Mathew 7:21-23. Last year, the Al­mighty in His infinite mercies vin­dicated me and the Pension Reform Task Team owing to a petition writ­ten on September 30, 2013 by one Barrister T. E. O. Okocha and Dr. R. Afuzie, Personal Assistant and Lawyer respectively, to one of the high level alleged pension thieves under trial, which were duly signed and received at both the ICPC and EFCC against Senator Aloysius Etuk, Chairman of the Senate Pen­sion Probe Committee for collecting massive bribe from their boss, Dr. Teidi Shuaibu, to the tune of N3 bil­lion through them, farm machiner­ies, land in Abuja) just to blackmail Maina, rubbish the achievements of the task team and disband it, so as to stop the Maina-led team from courageously blocking the stealing of pension funds.
Senator Etuk knows what he did to thousands of pensioners in Ni­geria. And he should not ever think that he did all these things against me, but rather,against the millions of pensioners, their dependants and the Nigerian pension system.
I will also justify this with a copy of the stamped received petition both at the EFCC and the ICPC. Your paper may wish to publish it for Nigerians to also see my proof.
Etuk should also recall that he solicited N2 billion bribe from me at a coerced meeting in his residence at Asokoro, Abuja He sent his aides (names withheld) while both of us sat by his swimming pool. But unknown to Etuk, some security of­ficials within the team were alerted and were at Etuks house during the meeting. I told Etuk that I have never seen even N1 billion, not to talk of having my own money in such figures, to give him, and I asked him to tell me what the bribe was supposed to do? He said it was to appease some high people to allow me to continue with my work as the Chairman. I am ready to have a face-to-face meeting with Etuk and if he can swear on his Bible that he never had that meeting with me at his house by his swimming pool, then I stand corrected.
How much of pension fund missed under your watch?
First and foremost, it is im­portant to note that President Goodluck Jonathan, approved my appointment as the Chairman of the Pension Reform Task Team on the recommendation of the Head of Service through a Technical Committee who went to all pension offices and under-studied their operational systems. I was then the Acting Director of the Customs Immigration and Prisons Pension Office (CIPPO) and my office was rated as the best in terms of transparency and accountability. So, it was purely on merit that Chief Steve Oronsaye, recommended my appointment to the President.
The Chairman of the Senate Pen­sion Committee wants to divert Ni­gerians to look the other way while he goes home with the massive bribe he received from the pension thieves. How could I have stolen monies that never came through my office and the fact that we as a team never had any bank account. We are not a statutory body, so we don’t receive appropriation from the National Assembly.
I challenged Nigerians, especially the Senate Committee, several times on live television to show where my office or I ever came in contact with such monies, but for two years now, no one has taken up that challenge. We worked under the Head of Service of the Federa­tion. We never had spending power, and so we always run to the Head of Service for stationery and other of­fice equipment and even our normal allowances were being approved by the Head of Service.So how could I have seen such money?
How PRTT operated under my leadership
Whenever members of our team got intelligence on funds either stolen or hidden, they advise us and we confirm the intel­ligence, after which we inform the Minister of Finance, who in turn advises the Accountant General of the Federation to contact the banks or financial institutions concerned towards mopping up the funds. You can see that we as a task team never ever had contact with these funds. I don’t know where these accusations are coming from because the Senate denied accusing me of funds misap­proprition issue at the court.
Those very few Nigerians that still hold the view that billions of naira went missing under my custody as the PRTT Chairman, are either the few ignorant ones or those who know the truth, but due to their kiths and kins’ involvement in the stealing, decided to ride on the false assumptions. The enlightened public and the media all know that it was just a melodrama by some Senators who are used to oversight extortion, bribe-for-big-budget, contracts scavenging and bogus budget inflation. These were things we stood against.
Let me ask you, is it possible for you to steal what has not been given to you? The National Assembly has not appropriated any fund to the Maina Pension Team, then how could it be possible to misappropri­ate what has not been appropriated? The notion of Pension Reform Task Team misappropriation of pension funds is baseless and untrue. These spurious allegations are the product of Etuk-Gaya-led Senate Pension Probe Committee who bitterly hate the Pension Task Team with passion. There has never been any established fact to support these spurious allegations.
Therefore, the Senate Pension Probe Committee grossly misin­formed and misled the entire Senate with a fictitious report muddled up with a multitude of naked and misleading unjustifiable conclusions against the Pension Reform Task Team. It is important for Nigeri­ans to equally know that since the inauguration of the pension team in June 2010 to 2012 when it was disbanded, the National Assembly never appropriated even one naira for the Pension Reform Task Team.
Kindly refer to the Appropriation Acts of 2011 and 2012 and if you find the name Pension Reform Task Team then I stand corrected. So where and how could the pension team have misappropriated funds when the National Assembly has not appropriated any fund to it?
The Pension Task Team is not a statutory body. Thus, the Head of Service has the exclusive rights for expenditure control of his office. All financial or material engagements of the task team are subject to approv­als from the Head of Civil Service of the Federation. There is no period when the Chairman of the Pension Task Team who was an ordinary Deputy Director became the Head of Civil Service of the Federation? The Head of Service never handed his office to me, so we had no power of approval of one naira and no operational budget either and no bank account to date.
The task team only dealt with paper work to compute pensioners’ entitlements, after which it would then send to Head of Service for approval. Nigerians should note that the team is not in custody of recovered funds; the recoveries are executed by anti-graft agencies where applicable.
The functions of the pension team whose membership were drawn from EFCC, ICPC, Office of the Accountant General, DSS, Office of the Auditor General of the Federation, Immigration Service, Customs, Prisons Service, Office of the Head of Service of the Federa­tion, Attorney General of the Fed­eration’s Office, Public Complaints Commission, National Association of Nigerian Pensioners, Association of Retirees are mainly to restructure and cleanse the system through biometrics capturing, processing of payments of genuine pensioners and blocking loopholes that are prone to corrupt practices. The team has delivered these responsibilities to the best interest of this country.
Assessing war against corrup­tion under Jonathan’s adminis­tration
Let me tell you that during my stewardship as the Chairman, Pension Task Force, we caused the arrest of top civil servants, perma­nent secretaries, directors, company chief executives, banking person­nel, etc, but the President never interfered. He has never demanded the release of anybody.

Culled from The sun