Three
months after the suspension of the Director General of the Pension
Transition administration directorate,
(PTAD) Ms Nellie Mayshak, there is still palpable silence over the report of
the investigative team that was set up to probe a litany of allegations leveled
against her.
Ms
Mayshak was suspended by the Minister of Finance Mrs. Kemi Adeosun in February,
2016 on the grounds of a string of accusations bothering on administrative
ineptitude to give room for a team of investigators drafted from the office of
the accountant general of the federation, while an acting director general was
from the same office of the AGF to oversee activities at the department, pending
the completion of the investigation.
The investigators, who
were mainly auditors from the office of the accountant general of the
federation according to information, were given two weeks to complete their
forensic sweeping and submit their report to the appropriate authority.
No
sooner was the suspension order slammed on Mayshak, than she was picked up by
the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, quizzed and detained for 10days
based on an interim report purportedly submitted to the minister and forwarded
to the commission by same.
More than three months
after the acting director general assumed office and Mayshak shoved aside, the
minister according to information is yet to get a final report from the
investigators, let alone take action to avail the public of the culpability or
otherwise of the suspended Director General.
An authoritative source at
the headquarters of the Pension Transition Administration Department in Katsina
Ala, Abuja informed that the office has been virtually taken over by staff from
the office of the Accountant General of the federation who have strategically
positioned themselves in all the key units of the commission. They have fixed
new salaries for themselves, far and above what was in operation and which the
commission was vehemently criticized for by the public. Yet they are meant to
be there on interim arrangement as a task force of some sorts.
We also gathered that there is a growing
disenchantment among the workforce especially the pioneer staff who are
complaining to whoever cares to listen of slowdown in work format, civil
service bottlenecks which they say is antithetical to the template of the
directorate and this is beginning to
take its toll on the speedy monthly payments of pensioners.
Their biggest fear is that
the Directorate does not become another episode of the scandalous AbdulRasheed
Maina Pension Task Force.
Now, the question is: how long does it take to
come up with a report on a directorate of barely three years old with staff
strength of less than 300? What does the
civil service rules say concerning the duration of suspension of an officer
before a final decision is taken? What option is available to an aggrieved
officer whose suspension lingers beyond the statutory time lag and what is the
implication for a government to run an MDA with an adhoc management staff?
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