Fresh facts have emerged on why the Presidency relieved the Director General of the National Pension Commission, Chinelo Anohu-Amaizu and other commissioners of their position.
Also, it was gathered that a crisis is currently brewing at the PenCom office over the sack of the management team.
Our correspondent learnt from a senior management staff, who pleaded anonymity because he’s not competent to speak on the matter, that the insistence of the Anohu-Amaizu-led management team that the Federal Government could not borrow or use the N3.5 trillion pension contribution funds for other purposes, was the real reason for dissolving the team, which still has about one year to complete its tenure.
The source said that on more than three occasions in 2016, officials from the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget Office and Debt Management Office approached the board and management of PenCom on the plan by government to utilise the pension contributory funds, which is now about N3.5 trillion, to run the 2016 budget, and promised that it would be refunded after the FG secured the loan facilities expected from international institutions.
“But on each of such meetings, the management would draw attention of the officials to the law establishing the commission, which makes it unlawful to divert any part of the contributory funds to other uses.
“At a time, the board was pushing the whole affair on the doorsteps of the DG and this was the last straw, which saw the government disengage the CEO with all the commissioners and the board,” he alleged.
\Spokesman of the Finance Ministry, Malachi Adeoye, however, denied this allegation, saying, “Presidency has every right to make changes in the headship of all its agencies and departments.
The ministry has no hands in appointing or removing any head of the MDAs.” Adeoye, however, refused to make comments on the alleged pressure from his ministry and other offices to make PenCom compromise its position on the pension funds.
He rather stated that the Presidential Committee set up by President Muhammadu Buhari and headed by Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun, to harmonise the outstanding N20 billion pensions owed by the Federal Government, was still working with Pencom and other relevant agencies to submit its report before the removal of the PenCom boss.
According to him, the Presidency dissolved heads of more than five parastatal, one of which was PenCom. He wondered why there should be any controversy over that of the pension commission’s boss.
Some staff of PenCom, penultimate Saturday, alleged an invasion of the Abuja headquarters of the agency by suspected operatives of the Department of State Services.
The armed DSS operatives were said to have ordered staff of the commission out of the premises while also frisking them as they left their offices to ensure that they did not go away with any PenCom official document.
Meanwhile, Aliyu Abdulrahman Dikko, appointed as a replacement for AnohuAmazu, is waiting to assume duty along with the commission’s new board chairman, Funso Doherty.
