From Adanna Nnamani, Abuja
The Nigerian Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) has said that the viral reports of termites eating up vouchers at the organisation was an act of mischief and attempt to blow things out of proportion.
NSITF insisted that its current management has nothing to do with the financial infractions that recently brought brought the Fund before the Senate.
According to a statement by the Fund on Thursday, “We wish to officially make it clear without any shred of doubt that these financial infractions have nothing to do with the Current Managementwhich is just a year old. They were rather financial violations and sleazes committed by the former managements and board who superintended over the affairs of our organisation between 2012 and 2017. Some members of the present management team were not even staff members of the organisation at this period in question.
It said the current management submitted itself to the senate committee recognizing that government is a continuum, and in order to aid the law makers in carrying out their statutory oversight functions.”Indeed, when the Senate Committee initiated this current probe in 2021, we had to set up an internal committee to retrieve from First Bank and Skye Bank, detailed transactions involving the NSITF under the period as requested by the Committee.
The documents were subsequently submitted to the Senate Committee. And to further assist the Senate Committee in the performance of their function, at their prompting, we equally invited the former Managing Directors – Munir Abubakar (2010-2016) Ismail Agaka (2016-2017) and Bayo Somefun (2017-2020) under whose tenures these infractions as reported in the Auditor General’s Report took place, to respond to some of the questions raised in the reports of 2018 which the Senate is probing. Nigerians who attended the Senate Public Hearing on Thursday, 11 August , 2022, know and understand undoubtedly, that beyond mischief and the attempt to make mountain out of mole hill, the circumstance under which reference was made to termites, when one of the past Managing Directors had claimed that the vouchers for the N5B payment made in 2013 would still be in a container in the compound of the fund.
The Fund recalled the genesis of the issue in 2015, when the EFCC acting on petitions and tip-off from whistle blowers investigated the accounts of the NSITF and discovered massive looting to the tune of N62B.
“Now fast forward to August 2022 before the Senate Accounts Committee. The same former Managing Director was asked why N5billion was paid from NSITF accounts in two banks to some persons without vouchers and he deviated from his earlier statement on the same matter in 2015 to say that the vouchers might be at the NSITF’s strong room or container where documents were kept. It was at this juncture that the current Managing Director, Dr. Michael Akabogu interjected that if the container he was referring to is the one abandoned together with the contents by him-Munir and his successors- Agaka and Somefun to inclement weather for years, then, it must be a deliberate ploy to allow these vouchers, if they ever existed, to be feasted upon by the elements. Indeed, there is no termite at the NSITF! It is our stand therefore that the former Managing Directors of the Fund between 2012 – 2017 should explain if there were vouchers actually. And if the answer is Yes, where they kept them.