By Ibrahim Abdul’Aziz, Regional Correspondent
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Governor Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri of Adamawa state has paid a surprise visit to the state pension board, during which he engaged the management over disbursement of N1.5 billion earlier released to the board.
The governor who took them unaware by the visit walked straight to the office of the executive chairman Adamawa state pension board chairman Mr. Thomas Madi.
Fintiri ‘grilled’ the chairman on sensitive questions related to corruption and scandal being peddled and the governor seems worried about the allegation after releasing over N1.5 billion to settle pension backlog.
In his words, ‘’ I have received my own negative report on what’s happening. Of course, people must complain but definitely, there are some complaints, most times are genuine and need to be cleared by the board and officials in charge, so I am here to know.
‘’ I am here to know the procedures/ process and probably the challenges you faced. Because some of the reports reaching me are that there is a tendency of recycling people, though I am not questioning your integrity.
‘’Another issue, is the allegations that staff here are in the habit of hiding peoples’ files so that they must be bribed before the files are out!
‘’Thirdly, people are not paid their complete money until they part-away with a certain amount of money. And on my own, I want to know why you are still paying 2010 and 2011 when before this management, the information from the report that was submitted to me was even in 2012, there were just some few staff that did not receive their entitlements. So what has now taken us back to 2010-2011? While I expected that we would have now moved in 2014.
But after an explanation by the board chairman, Mr. Thomas Madi, the governor seems to be satisfied as he applauded the management for the coordinated disbursement of the fund.
‘’ The management of this board that I appointed to head this place are carefully selected and are men and women of integrity.
‘’ I am always sure that they will always do right to all manners of people, but whenever allegations come up, it’s my responsibility to investigate,’’ said he.
Fintiri, however, warned politicians in the state to avoid playing politics with government’s policies, ‘’ people should avoid playing politics with every good effort government is making.’’
While fielding questions from the governor, the executive chairman of the board, Mr. Thomas Madi said that they were diligent in discharging their duties.
‘’Your Excellency, your questions are apt sir. But let me begin with the process of payment which I earlier told you that we adopted as aboard a process of payment whereby we designed a form based on approval form issued to pensioners. There is also bank scrutiny.
‘’We will do more and this visit will ginger us,’’ he noted.
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