Present and past management of the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund ( NSITF), have been under fire from the Nigerian Senate for failing to justify spending of N17.158 billion in 2013 with required evidential documents, some of which were alleged to have been ‘eaten-up’ by termites.
The N17.158 billion, as stated in the 2018 Audit report, was the total amount of money transferred by NSITF from its Skye and First Bank accounts into various untraceable accounts belonging to individuals and companies from January to December 2013. The Auditor-General’s office had in the 2018 Audit report, raised 50 different queries bordering on alleged misappropriation of funds by the management of the agency, which is being looked into by the Senate Committee on Public Accounts.
In sustaining or vacating the query, the Senate Committee headed by Senator Mathew Urhoghide, interrogated NSITF’s past and present managements on where monies, totalling N17.158 billion, were transferred between January and December 2013.
However, the management could not offer satisfactory explanations on the undocumented multiple transfers as those at the helm of affairs in 2013 told the committee that documents such as vouchers were left behind by them, while the present Managing Director of NSITF, Dr. Michael Akabogu said no documents of such is in their kitty. “The shipping container the said documents were kept by past management has not only been beaten by rains over the years; but even possibly being eaten up by termites“, he said.
The Managing Director of NSITF from 2010 to 2016, Umar Munir Abubakar, in his submissions, said he was unaware of the query and had no explanations for it since the audit was not carried out during his tenure. But his successor, Adebayo Somefun, who was the Head of the agency from May 2017 to July 2020, said those in the Accounts section should be able to trace the documents which the current General Manager of Finance alleged to have been locked up in an abandoned container within the premises of the Trust Fund in Abuja.
In its reaction to the submissions of the past and present NSITF officials, the committee, through its Chairman, Senator Urhoghide, ordered them to re-appear before the committee with all the requested evidential documents unfailingly on Thursday, September 22, 2022.
