Maina to Senate: Count me out of N195bn pension probe

Category: News Published on Thursday, 17 January 2013 06:00 Written by Abdulkadir Badsha Mukhtar

The Chairman of the Pension Reform Task Force Team, Abdulrasheed Maina, has asked the Senate to direct its probe into the alleged N195bn missing pension fund to the police, military and other pension offices and urged the Senate to count him out.

Senate spokesman, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, had told newsmen in Abuja that there would be no escape route for Maina over his alleged complicity in the fresh N195 billion pension fraud.

But Maina who spoke yesterday through his spokesman, Hassan Salihu, said: “As far as the Pension Task Team is concerned, If N195bn pension funds are missing in the military, police or other such pension offices, the Senate Pension Probe Committee should invite those officials or administrators of these pension offices. If it is the Head of Service Office, same should be done to those who have handled it then, and not the Pension Team.”

He described Abaribe’s statement as a wrong perception because the alleged fraud occurred between 2005 and 2010, saying the pension team was barely 2 years old.

He called on the Senate to fish out pension thieves and cause their arrest in order to recover the missing fund.

Abaribe had noted that the Senate was not helpless in bringing the embattled pension task force boss to book.