N12.86bn pension scam

Forty-five thousand out of the 141,970 Federal Government pensioners who are being owed their gratuity can finally heave a sigh of relief as more monies owed them have been discovered in fictitious accounts in seven major banks in the country.

These monies, totalling N12.86bn were lodged in the accounts of some top directors of the Pensions Unit, Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission had last month found N800m in the account of a Deputy Director (Finance and Accounts) Mrs. Phiana Chidi, and only last Wednesday, GidiGlobe findings showed that an additional N12.6bn was traced to Chidi and another director, Dr. Suleiman Shuaibu, by the anti-graft agency.
Following the fresh revelation, seven bank managers, who allegedly connived with the directors to reroute the money into ghost accounts have been arrested by EFCC operatives.

The bank officials, it was learnt, aided the suspects when they were scouting for people who could front as authentic pensioners.

A reliable source told our correspondent that 34,000 of the 45,000 pensioners actually exist but their identities were hidden in order to divert the funds out of the pension’s office.

She said, “What happened was that the suspects impersonated the 34,000 pensioners and were collecting their monies. The authentic 34,000 pensioners are those who were not coming to collect their gratuity for some reasons and the suspects decided to hijack the identities of these 34,000.

“When these fake 34,000 people collect the pensions, they remove their commission and return the rest to the directors. In fact, we just got one of their agents, who has nine different names and operates nine different bank accounts. We have been able to get N100m from him.”

It was further gathered that the remaining 11,000 pensioners were on the payroll and had been drawing pensions but do not have identities.

The source explained, “There are 141,970 pensioners on the payroll of the Federal Government and less than 90,000 were verified and over 34,000 were ghost pensioners. The other 11,000 pensioners, who were on the payroll had been drawing pensions but do not have identities. This means that they replaced their names with the original 11,000.

“We are dealing with two scams- the first 34,000 authentic pensioners still have their names on the list, but their money is being collected by people who have stolen their identities, while the second set of 11,000 pensioners are fake. We have no record of them, but there are actually 11,000 pensioners who should be collecting pensions and their names are not on the list.

“In one instance, we discovered that the names of 554 pensioners were drawing pensions from one single account. This means one pension was operating the account and collecting the pensions of 554 people.”

Our correspondent gathered that the lid was blown last August when the EFCC carried out a routine verification exercise in the Office of the Head of the Civil Service.

During the exercise, it was found out that a lot of things were amiss with the pension records of the office and an investigation was launched by the EFCC.

Already, GidiGlobe gathered that the monthly pension bill from the Office of the Head of the Civil Service has reduced from N3bn to N1bn following the verification investigations.

It was also learnt that a huge percentage of the N12.6bn went into the award of fictitious contracts to non-existent companies. Some of the companies are Gozinda Enterprises, Basunta Nigeria Ltd and Orhtega Akphotehiri Nigeria Ltd.

Confirming the latest findings, the EFCC head, Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Babafemi, said, “I can tell you that this a big syndicate and I don’t want to say much so as not to jeopardise the investigation because we are still searching for some suspects.

“We are talking about thousands of pensioners who have served this country tirelessly for years only for them to be deprived of the fruit of their labour. Some of them have died while standing on the queue for their pensions, while some have given up hope of ever collecting their pension because of the greed of some people. We hope to right this wrong.”