SAN FRANCISCO, March 28, (THEWILL) – Five deputy directors of the Pensions Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) have been fired for alleged employment fraud after a staff verification exercise revealed that they breached established regulations prior to their employment.
This was revealed by the Executive Secretary of PTAD, Sharon Ikeazor, who was reviewing the operations of the agency since her assumption of office in September 2016, saying the five directors had to be compelled to disengage from service at the end of the staff verification exercise, which commenced in 2014.
The affected directors were Godson Ukpevo, who until his disengagement was in charge of Civil Service Pension department; Uloma Uruakpa (Customs, Immigrations and Prisons Pension department); Taiwo Ogundipe (Parastatals Pension department); Atiku Saleh (Police Pension department), and Roz Ben-Okagbue (Pension Support Service department).
Ikeazor said the verification exercise uncovered that at the time the five directors were employed, they were already above the mandatory age limit of 50. Also, some of them were already retired from public service elsewhere whereas, in line with public service regulations, prospective employees into the service must meet the minimum entry qualification of not being below 18 years, or not more than 50 years of age on the date of first appointment.
She added that the affected officials may be prosecuted and made to refund all government monies they earned illegally during the period they occupied their positions.
Ikeazor also revealed that the directorate is now saddled with the responsibility of administering the pensions of about 223,000 from the 160,000 pensioners it inherited at at inception attributing the increase to the rapid consolidation of 253 parastatals and agencies under PTAD, saying in spite of this the monthly pension obligations have been met since inception.
“PTAD did not inherit a credible database from any of the pension offices it took over from,” Ikeazor lamented.
“There were nominal rolls, but no complete database. The lack of database and information on pensioners in general makes it very difficult to resolve complaints.
“During the verification, about 15,000 unverified names from the payroll, mostly those who were not able to provide their bank verification numbers, BVN, linked to their bank accounts, were removed. Those who were able to provide their BVNs later were reinstated.
“We are working with the Minister of Finance to ensure that all outstanding legacy funds are transferred to us to enable us defray some of government’s liabilities arising from the non-payment of pensions.”
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