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| EFCC Operatives |
The Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission, on Tuesday, arraigned a federal civil servant,
Esther Onukaogu, for allegedly manipulating the Integrated Personnel and
Payroll Information System, one of the systems through which the Federal
Government pays salaries.
The Punch report continues:
Esther
allegedly added the names of two of her siblings, Ebenuwa Chinazo and Onukaogu
Joshua, to IPPIS when she was working with a consulting firm.
The
PUNCH had exclusively reported on January 23, 2017, that as part of investigations
into the ₦143bn ‘ghost workers’ scam, the EFCC had uncovered some infractions
in IPPIS.
The
EFCC on Tuesday arraigned Esther and her siblings before Justice A. S. Adepoju
of the FCT High court sitting in Wuse, Abuja, on 13 counts of conspiracy and
obtaining money by false pretences.
The
commission said between 2012 and 2013, Esther input her name and two of her
siblings (Jennifer and Joshua) into the IPPIS database as staff of Federal
Ministry of Education and Federal Ministry of Works respectively, for the
purpose of receiving salaries from the Federal Government.
Esther
and her co-defendants were said to have drawn salaries as ‘ghost workers’ from
their ‘respective ministries’ for three years to the tune of ₦9m before the law
caught up with them.
The
offence breaches Section 1 (1) (a) and is punishable under Section 1 (3) of the
Advance Fee Fraud and Other Fraud Related Offences Act, No. 14, 2006.
One
of the charges read in part, “That you Onukaogu Onyinyechi Esther and Onukaogu
Joshua between January 2014 and December 2014, at Abuja, within the
jurisdiction of this honourable court, with the intention to defraud, obtained
the sum of ₦1,860,865.72 from the Federal Government of Nigeria, under the
false pretences that Onukaogu Joshua is a civil servant working in the Federal
Ministry of Education, which pretence you knew to be false.”
The
defendants pleaded not guilty to the charge.
In
view of their pleas, counsel for the EFCC, Elizabeth Alabi, urged the court to
fix a date for trial and to remand the suspects in prison custody.
But
the defence counsel, M. M. Hirse, informed the court that he had pending
applications for the bail of the defendants.
Alabi,
however, urged the court to refuse the application, adding that the accused
persons “were once granted bail and they jumped it.”
However,
Justice Adepoju opined that “the purpose of bail is to secure the attendance of
the defendants in court. It is their constitutional right to be granted bail”.
The
judge, therefore, granted each of the defendants bail in the sum of ₦5m with
one surety each in like sum. The sureties must be civil servants not below
salary grade level 10.
The
matter was adjourned till September 21, 2017 for hearing.
Meanwhile,
the defendants are to be remanded in EFCC custody pending the perfection of
their bail conditions.
The
Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba
Shehu, had revealed last December that the Efficiency Unit of the Federal
Ministry of Finance created by the present administration was able to uncover
50,000 ghost workers and saved the nation of ₦13bn monthly during the year.
According
to the Presidential Initiative on Continuous Auditing on the nominal roll, 23,
846 ghost workers were discovered in Ministries, Departments and Agencies which
do not fall under IPPIS while 522 were discovered in the Police Pensioners
covered by Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate.
About 18,330 ghost pensioners were identified in the military pension scheme while 396 were discovered in MDAs which fall under IPPIS.
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