Maina’s supporters protest in Abuja
Supporters of the embattled chairman of the Pension Reform Task Team, PRTT Mr. Abdulrasheed Maina yesterday in Abuja disrupted traffic flow within Three Arms Zone area, linking the Federal Secretariat and the Supreme Court, as they protested at the entrance of the National Assembly
The protesters, mainly, youths under the aegis of Pensioners’ Children said they were at the National Assembly to protest against the witch-hunting of Maina by the Senate, stressing that the Senators overreached themselves when they went outside their constitutional powers of investigation as contained in Sections 88 and 89 of the 1999 Constitution.
Spokesperson of the group, Mr. Etuk Bassey Williams, said the call by the Senate on President Goodluck Jonathan was unconstitutional and appealed to the president to disregard the resolution.
According to Williams, it was untrue that Maina misappropriated N159 billion of pensioners’ fund when in fact, “he recovered N251billion from suspected fraudsters, and the recovered amount is lodged with the Central Bank of Nigeria.”
Meanwhile, a statement from the task team by its consultant on media, Jide Fashikun in Abuja disclosed that there was credible and verifiable intelligence that the Federal Civil Service Pension Office was going back to the looting era, as pensioners were being denied of their monthly pensions.
About 98 per cent pensioners had been grossly underpaid and some of them totally denied pensions in the months of November 2012, December 2012 and January 2013.
Fashikun noted that in November 2012; the Head of Service Pension Office hijacked the preparation of monthly pension’s payment without the knowledge of the Pension Task Team or recourse to its authentic biometric database.
This singular act showed that the Pension Task Team does not approve and had no control over their finances unlike what Nigerians are made to believe.
THE SUN NEWSPAPER
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