The Chairman, Pension Reform Task Force, Mr. Abdulrasheed Maina, on Thursday in Abuja, disclosed that the body had uncovered a N151bn fraud in pension offices across the nation.

The scam was allegedly uncovered by the team with the assistance of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.

A statement by the acting spokesperson of the EFCC, Mr. Wilson Uwujaren, said Maina disclosed this during a courtesy visit to the Acting Chairman of the commission, Mr. Ibrahim Lamorde.

He said that out of the amount, the team, in conjunction with the EFCC, traced and recovered a total of about N24bn and N15bn worth of properties from some corrupt government officials in the Pension Department of the Office of the Head of Service, while 66 illegal bank accounts with a combined balance of N180m were also discovered.

He expressed appreciation to the EFCC  for its roles in the discovery.

Maina, while decrying the plight of pensioners before the team was inaugurated in June 2010, said their ordeals were brought about not as a result of paucity of funds, “but due to large-scale corruption through diversion and mismanagement of pension fund, manipulation and falsification of data, non-improvement in the pension administrative structure and bureaucracy with poor, unreliable and inefficient accounting system.”

He said in order to check such anomalies; his team had successfully conducted nationwide biometric verification of pensioners, and in the process, detected 71,133 fake pensioners.

Maina sought the assistance of the anti-graft agency in the areas of personnel and security of lives of his team members “because we are increasingly getting threats to our lives from some faceless members of the public.”

Source: Punch/Friday Olokor