Hardship. Pain. Agony Long faces. Curses. These, are the fallouts of the new transport policy recently introduced in Abuja by the Federal Capital Territory Administration, FCTA.

The Minister of the FCT, Bala Mohammed, had promised that the new policy would ease transportation and movement in and out of Nigeria’s capital city, but since June 3 when it took effect, the impact on social and economic life, including schooling and civil service work, has been substantially negative.

Speaking through his senior special assistant on political matters and National Assembly, Usman Jibril Wowo, the minister promised that that “will make people move from the satellite towns to the city with ease and at a cheaper rate as the highest fare is N150 for people from Gwagwalada, Kuje and Zuba and as low as N50 for movements within the business district.”
But the experience of residents has been different. Rather, not only have transportation costs increased, movement for students, civil servants, traders and all other residents has become a problem so much so that schooling and academic life in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, faces a major setback.

A teacher at the Pilot Science Primary School, Wuse Zone 5, S Truman, is among those who come into town from Kubwa, a satellite town, every working day. Before now, by 7.30am she would have gotten to school, ready for the day’s business. But not anymore.

Since early June when the new transport system commenced she has been coming late to school because getting a bus to town has become such a hassle.

But even more worrying is the impact students. According to her, many of them get to school late, sometimes past 10.00 am, and thus miss part of the morning classes.

Even for those who come early, because many of them have to wake up much earlier now and also face a hell of a time getting to school, a great number of them sleep for the most part of the morning classes.

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“In the past we used to punish students for late-coming but we find out now that if we are to punish them they may not be able to attend more than three lessons before the day is over and this will definitely affect performance,” she said.

The policy is also taking its toll on the parents as workers who have to commute from outside the city now report very late at work while some who cannot put up with the stress just stay at home.

For usually laid back civil servants, many have chosen to report at work only on specific days, sometimes only on Mondays or twice a week.

By 3:30pm-4:00pm in the afternoon, offices are nearly almost deserted as workers migrate to the parks to secure a good position on the queue and also to beat traffic, leaving their jobs to suffer.

The situation at designated terminals where the big buses are meant to move commuters in and out of the city is most pitiful during peak hours, usually early in the morning and between 3.00 pm and 4:00pm and is marked by long queues of commuters who are eager to secure a space in the limited buses provided by the government.

Commuters spend between 45 minutes and as much as two hours waiting at designated bus stop for these buses.

In spite of the queues which are meant to make the process of entering a bus orderly, there is still occasional pushing and struggling by the impatient or unruly, making the place rowdy and conducive for pickpockets.
Also, because of the huge numbers of passengers, the buses are overloaded with many standing in the aisles, thus leaving the journey prone to accidents. Some commuters have to stand all the way to their destinations.

At the Nyanyan Park, designated as terminus for moving commuters from the Karu/Nyanyan/Mararaba axis, passengers sometimes have to wait for two hours to get a bus. The scene is pitifully chaotic as thousands of commuters gather as early as 6.00 am in a bid to get a bus to town.

And the people are full of tales of woe and wonder how a representative government can foist such hardship on citizens.

Stanley Chukwu, a self – employee man, condemned the new system and believed that it is aimed at “punishing the masses”. He added that the cost implication of the policy is high as what he spends now on transportation has doubled.

He complained that the buses are restricted to particular routes and compelled to leave at a particular time.

Michael Chinonso, a civil servant and Mararaba resident lamented that the earliest time he has reached office since the commencement of the new policy is 9.00am. He noted that government has a lot to lose with the new policy as it has greatly affected productivity because workers resume to the office late and leave early.

Tony Oga, another civil servant who lives in Nyanyan said the policy is anti-people and complained of the high cost on commuters. For example, like many others, he now has to take two to three buses/cabs to work instead of one which means that he has to pay more.

He lamented that as things are now his salary would only be sufficient to pay for his transportation leaving him with nothing to cater for his other needs.

These are some of the realities of the two weeks old transportation policy in Abuja that has outlawed mini-buses from the city’s centre and inflicted greater hardship on residents.
Commuters are yet to adjust to the transportation plan and many do not see the plan working because it is defective and ill timed. The major criticism against the policy is that the FCT government has not provided enough big buses to move the huge population of workers who come into town daily from satellite towns that surround the capital city.

Abdullahi Baguda, a tailor who lives in Dutse Alhaji but who has a shop in Wuse area said that it was irresponsible of the government to rush into such a policy that would impact on many lives without adequately providing for alternatives.

“If you look at the queues and the number of the buses available, then you will see that this government is not serious. I do not think they planned the whole thing well or had the interest of commuters at hear when they came up with the idea,” he lamented.

Odiachi Josephine, a civil servant said the policy would have been a good policy if government had test ran its effectiveness and efficiency before its formal launch. This was a position amplified by Chinonso who suggested that government should have taken a cue from system in Lagos where privately owned buses are allowed to operate along with BRT.

Odiachi suggested that government should have a rethink on the policy and increase the number of the buses with effective logistics.

She observed that it has increased traffic jams as some commuters manage to go to office with their old moribund cars. Truly, traffic in and out of Abuja has worsened since the policy took effect. The traffic prone Abuja/Mararaba/Keffi road is worse off as commuters now spend up to two hours on the road, particularly after office hours.

Some commuters who are positive about the new transportation policy say with more high capacity buses available and an extension of the routes and terminals, the plan would prove more effective than it is now

Impunity Reigns as civil servants continue the pillage of pension funds

In spite of the trial of many of their former bosses for stealing billions, senior civil servants in the office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, HOCSF, have again started looting pension funds meant for the payment of pensioners.

Like before, the civil servants who manage pension funds at the office of the HOCSF have employed a number of ways by which they pilfer pension funds, including the use of ghost and fake pensioners, awards of dubious contracts and embarking on bogus training programmes.

The new onslaught of looting in the pension office has affected the payment of pensions and gratuities to tens of thousands of retirees since November when a new team took over the administration of the funds.

The national chairman of the Association of Federal Public Service Retirees, Emmanuel Akinola Omoyeni, alleged that “Up to now, 80% of pensioners have not received their payments for November and December, 2012.”

In a protest letter written by the retirees to President Goodluck Jonathan seeking his intervention, signed by Omoyeni, they also allege that the arrears of about 4,000 pensioners which was approved by the disbanded Pension Reform Task Team, PRTT, for payment in November 2012 has also not been paid although money had been made available for the exercise.

Investigations by the www.icirnigeria.org showed that since November when a new team took over the administration of the pension office from the PRTT, officials have reverted to the old system employed in looting pensioners’ funds, using the same brazen tactics.

The former director of the office, Sani Teidi Shuaibu, and his deputy, Phina Ukamaka Chidi along with 30 others are before a Federal High Court in Abuja facing a 23 – count charge of stealing over N30 billion of the pension funds.

The new lords of the HOCSF pension office allegedly directing the looting now are V.A. Zafi, director of pension, Charles Wali, assistant director, pension accounts and John Atume, an accountant and internal auditor.

The first thing the new team did was to dismantle the biometric system developed by the PRTT which exposed the monumental pilfering that Shuaibu and others had perpetrated in the old order.

Through the nationwide biometrics conducted by the task team, it had been discovered that over 71,000 fake of ghost pensioners had been on the pension payroll and that officials had been collecting nearly one billion naira illegally monthly and pocketing it.

The Wali – led team, in order to revert to the old system, abandoned the database generated from the biometrics exercise by the task team and with which pensioners had been paid for months.

Insiders told our reporter that the task team did not do any handing over to any member of the new team and so they did not have anything to work with. But that was okay by them as it fit exactly into their plans.

What they did was to approach the banks through which pensioners were paid to collect payment schedules for as far back as June 2012.  Thus, all the retirees brought into the payroll between then and November have been excluded from payment.

At the time that the Wali team took over, the database showed that there were 129,000 genuine pensioners on the payroll of the HOCSF pension office.

However, the payment schedule of June 2012 obtained from banks had far less than that.

Sources in the pension office who are miffed by the return of the old system of looting told www.icirnigeria.org that Wali and others have made up the shortfall with fake pensioners.

That is what accounts for the non-payment since November of pension to thousands of retirees who had been on the payroll before. Their names have been replaced by fake pensioners.

A source in the HOCSF’s pension office said that officials there had been allocated the number of fake pensioners to contribute to the payroll and that senior persons have thousands of such ghost pensioners on the list now.

Even then, it appears that they want to take the looting to another level, apparently not satisfied with the number of fake pensioners they can add to the payroll.

Our sources said that the strategy the pension office bosses have adopted is to arrange for yet more persons to claim that they are pensioners who have not been captured in the payroll.

One official said that some of the persons being used to make such claims are the same crooks who were previously used before as ghosts to pad up the list of pensioners but were discovered and yanked off by the PRTT.

The pension office has so far claimed that there are some 10,000 pensioners who have lodged complaints of not being captured in the payroll. This claim, it appears, has got the head of service, Bukar Abba Aji, hoodwinked as he last week set up a 25 – member pension complaint resolution committee.

A statement by the director of press in the office of the Head of service, Tope Ajakaiye, said the committee was set up to resolve more than 10,000 complaints on pension payments and related issues.

Interestingly, and ironically too, the committee is headed by Zafi, one of the men behind the attempt to load the payroll with fake pensioners.

However, taking a cue from other pension thieves before them, these new rogues have also devised other means of dipping their hands in funds meant solely for payments to pensioners. One such method is to award bogus contracts to themselves through proxies.

Because the contract awards are fraudulent, payments for them are fraught with irregularities. For example payments for such contracts are made without going through normal auditing processes.

Also, in many cases, although the contracts are awarded to companies, payments are made into private accounts and when they are made to the companies’ accounts, they find their way back into the pockets of officials of the pension office.

In one such alleged bogus contract payment, the pension office claimed that it employed the services of a consultant, Consult and Capital Ltd, to “verify, reconcile and recover all trapped funds belonging to the OHCSF in distressed City Bank Plc and AFEX Bank”.

In a memo written by Wali on March 19, 2013, the director observed that the job which was contracted out to the consultant in 2010 had been concluded as he had recovered the sum of N806,741,771 previously trapped in City Bank and recommended that Consult and Capital Ltd be paid  of N80, 669,177.10 , being 10%  of the funds recouped.

However, it is alleged that the original agreement with the consultant was that he would be paid 5% of any funds recovered or N30 million or whichever of the two options is lower.

However, after finishing the job, it is alleged that the consultant was asked by Wali to jerk up his claim to 10%.

Ordinarily, in the civil service, when a contractor seeks upward review of the cost of a job, a committee is set up to review the request and make appropriate recommendation. But in this case no such committee was set up and no recommendation was made or followed.

All that the pension director did to effect the review was write a memo recommending that 10 % of the total sum recovered be paid to the consultant.

When our reporter spoke to the consultant, Olumuyiwa Yemi OyeniyI, he said he did legitimate business and only got paid for services he rendered. According to him, he never bargained or agreed to be paid 5% for the job, in fact, maintaining that he charged 15 % initially but was finally paid 10%.

” I never bargained for 5%. How could i? The money had been there for seven to eight years and they did not even know about it until I told them. So they could not have dictated terms to me,” he said.

However, contrary to Wali’s claim in his memo that the consultancy job was given out in 2010, Oyeniyi said that he got it in 2012.

He denied doing anything illegal or untoward, adding: “I am a Christian and a pastor. I would not even have given any bribe if they had asked.”

Another dubious payment made by Wali and Zafi is the sum of N90 million paid to the Nigerian Union of Pensioners, NUP.

In a memo raised by Zafi recommending the payment of the money to the union, he recalled that President Goodluck Jonathan had approved the payment of 1% check – off dues to NUP from November, 2012.

He also noted that the presidential approval was given after a meeting between President Jonathan and the leadership of the Nigerian Labour Congress, NLC, during which a planned strike by workers on the plight of pensioners was discussed.

Zafi said that one of the conditions given for calling off the strike was the restoration of the 1% check off dues to NUP. The assistant director, therefore, recommended the payment of N72, 282,686.92 being arrears of the 1% check off dues to NUP.

However, this was a well – orchestrated fraud, by which even President Jonathan was deceived.

First, the memo raised by Zafi recommended the payment of N72, 282,686.92 as 1% check off dues for five months to NUP. But the voucher raised and the cheque issued to the union was for N90 million, which is N17, 717,313.08 more.

More importantly, the President was not told that check off dues were not deducted from payments to pensioners and so nothing was due to be remitted to the pensioners’ union.

Before now, 1% was deducted from monthly pension paid to retirees. These checks off dues were then remitted to the NUP to help in administering the union’s affairs. However, the deduction of check off dues from pensioners’ pay was stopped last year after the task team discovered a huge fraud in the union. It was revealed that the leadership of the union had been diverting funds running into billions into private pockets.

In fact, it was discovered that the national president of NUP, Ali Abacha and the national secretary, Actor Zal, colluded with officials of the pension office to steal billions meant for pensioners.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, which investigated the matter has since dragged Abacha and Zal before the Federal High Court, Abuja.

The agency said that the three men stole a total of nearly N3 billion from pensioners’ funds. All the accused persons are out on bail while their trial continues.

However, it is the same corrupt leadership of the NUP being prosecuted in court for diversion of funds that the pension office of the HOCSF has paid N90 million with the President’s approval.

Pensioners believe that, like before, the money would not be used for the welfare or issues concerning them but would end up in private pockets.

Another strategy employed in stealing pensioners’ funds in the HOCSF’s office is by organising local and international training for staff. In many cases, the vouchers for the payments for the training programmes never passed through the audit department.

In a lot of cases, payments were made and vouchers raised long after that.

In one such training programme involving about 40 persons, officials collected payments to organise the sessions for five days but ended up spending only two days, pocketing the money for organising the event as well as stipends to staff for three days.

It was equally gathered that officials of the pension office also claimed that they were sending about 20 people overseas for training and collected sums running into several millions but the programme never held and no money was returned.

For these dubious payments, Wali and Zafi are alleged to use Atume, an auditor recently transferred to the pension office from the Federal Pay Office in Bayelsa.

He is the one who approved dubious vouchers that every other auditor refuses to clear. Although there are four or five persons who can sign vouchers, Atume’s signature appears on most of the vouchers approved for payment, many of them questionable.

Sources in the office said that when he just resumed and did not have the official audit stamp of the office of the HOCSF, Atume used the one he brought from his former office in Bayelsa until he was cautioned.

Pension funds administration in Nigeria came under close scrutiny last year with the discovery of monumental looting in the pension unit of the office of head of service and the police pension office.

While Shuaibu and other former officials of the HOCSF’s pension office are being prosecuted for stealing over N30 billion, at the police pension office, a former director who became a permanent secretary and others are being tried for pilfering over N40 billion.

Those being tried at the Federal High Court, Abuja include Abubakar Kigo, former director in the pension office and permanent secretary, ministry of Niger Delta; Esias Dangabar a retired director; Ahmed Wada, former deputy director, PPO, now director in the ministry of sports and Abdullahi Umar, deputy director.