THE Last has not been heard of the controversial case of the management of pension funds as the Senate, yesterday, revealed that N195bn unspent pension funds for the last five years could not be accounted for.

Stating this yesterday during the continuation of the public hearing on the pension fraud, Chairman of the Joint Senate Committee probing the management of pension funds, Senator Aloysius Etok, PDP, Akwa Ibom North-West, was however not happy that the chairman, Pension Tax Team, PTT, Alhaji Abdulrasheed Maina refused to appear before the committee.

He vowed that the Senate will not give him any opportunity if he fails to show up today to state his case on the pension fraud.

Senator Etok said: “We want to give Maina the last chance and this committee, which represents the Senate of the Federal Republic, is saying that whosoever is behind Maina’s arrogance should know that his time is up and the masses want him to account for his stewardship.

Says Maina must appear or…

“He should appear before this committee tomorrow (toady) at 11am without fail. If he doesn’t come tomorrow, the committee will proceed to hold the public hearing and we will take presentations from Prison Service, Police and other agencies.

“We will get all the presentations and make up our case and tell the public what we have discovered in the course of our investigations.”

Etok noted that he must appear against the backdrop that the chairman of PTT had organised several media conference, where he had accused the committee of not giving him fair hearing.

Funds breakdown

In his contribution, Senator Kabiru Gaya, Kano South, who noted that N195 billion pension fund was unaccounted for, brought out the breakdown of the figures according to the Accountant-General’s Office, between 2005 and 2011.

According to Senator Gaya, Police Pension Office, N131,483,873,694.63 released; N58,270,660,632.00 spent, while N44,213,213,062.00 is unaccounted for. On Military Pension Board, N317,609,082,566.05 was released, N294,076,743,532.87 spent and balance unaccounted for stood at N23,532,339,034.

Customs, Immigration, Prisons Pension Office, N85,249,222,900.16 released, N27,452,200,993.72 spent, while N27,797,822,127.00 unaccounted for.

For the Department of State Service Pension, he said N34,698,149,304.68 was allocated, N9,413,090,416 spent with a balance of N26,121,394,662.63.

Head of Service, according to Accountant-General’s report, had N139,056,523,955.20; N100,641,106,957.33 spent and N39,783,682,993.00 as the balance.

Meanwhile, Comptroller-General of Customs, Controller-General of Prisons, Chairman of ICPC, Chairman of EFCC, Head of Service, Director of Pension and Director, Police Pension Office are to appear before the committee today.

I once had a numerical discussion with a six year old who told has this fascination with numbers. He said, do you know that a billion is a thousand million.

I have a feeling that our leaders don't know that fact. The way billions of Naira gets missing in this county is very scarry.