Some federal permanent secretaries have started submitting responses to their queries on the alleged job racketeering scandals going on in their ministries in writing, to the Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions.

Investigation by our correspondent at the secretariat of the panel during the week revealed that many of the accounting officers submitted the written documents personally.

It was also discovered that while some of them sought audience with the Chairman of the committee, Senator Ayo Akinyelure, others simply submitted their responses and left.

The Senate said on Monday that it had demanded detailed written submissions from the permanent secretaries through the office of the Head of Service of the Federation, on their levels of involvement in the job racketeering scandal going on under their watch.

The President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, wrote the strongly-worded query to the various heads of the MDAs, through the HoS, which was despatched to the accounting officers by the Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions.

The official communication was titled, “Petition against the permanent secretaries and directors of human resources and administration of various MDAs for a deliberate failure to document engaged and deployed qualified candidates to their various MDAs between 2016 to 2019.”

The letter alleged that the non-documentation and deployment of the affected successful candidates had led to fraud and gross mismanagement of appropriated funds annually.

The Senate alleged further that the various MDAs were harbouring syndicates who were acting as fronts for some key officers in the establishment.

He said the criminals were collecting between N500, 000 and N1.5m from each candidate already engaged by the Federal Civil Service Commission before their documents would be processed and they would be deployed accordingly.

Confirming the latest development in an interview with our correspondent, Akinyelure said while the permanent secretaries were submitting written responses, the HoS and the Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission would answer verbal queries from the panel members.

He said, “We have started receiving responses from the permanent secretaries and we are treating the cases as they respond.

“What we discovered so far is that when letters are issued by the FCC and sent to the ministries, some officials will sit on the letters for one or more years and by the time they act on them, events would have overtaken it.

“We are therefore asking the HoS, FCSC and the permanent secretaries to tell us what happen to the funds appropriated for the salaries of the declared vacancies over the years.

“At the end of each financial year, the accounting officers will come and tell us in the National Assembly that their personnel cost performed 99.9 per cent.

“The HoS, the civil service commission would be summoned and asked to tell us the process they are undertaking.

“We want to know who takes money from applicants and eventually issued them with fake letters of employment and when the civil service commission eventually sends their names to the ministries to be engaged, they would wait for between one and three years before they would be finally documented.

“We are also inviting the Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission and the Director of Human Resources so that they can be on the same page with the National Assembly by giving us information that will enable us to track down the syndicates who are obtaining gratification from innocent Nigerian graduates.

“The HoS and FCSC will tell us the declared vacancies in the various ministries and parastatals over a given period of time.

“We will find out how many of them have been documented, how many of them have been issued with genuine letters and how many of the declared vacancies have been engaged officially by the FCSC.

“The FCSC should tell us at what time they send the lists to the various ministries and what actions the ministries have taken on them.

“Some ministry officials usually sit on the letters for one year before writing the FCSC to find out about the genuineness of the letters, it is in the process, that syndicates defraud innocent Nigerians.”

On how the panel got its information about the alleged job scandal, Akinyelure said, “We have petitions written by whistle-blowers, challenging the system of employing people to work in the federal ministries and agencies of government.”

He said, “The Senate is prepared more than ever before to go all out to check the abuses that have been going on for years.

“We are now telling Nigerians that those who have information should not hide it from their elected representatives in the legislature.

“We are determined to clean up the system. The belief in Nigeria today among graduates is that if you don’t know anybody, you cannot get a job.”

https://punchng.com/job-scandal-probe-perm-secs-submit-query-responses-to-senate/


Lalasticlala

What a country! Corruption is sinking this country and we are all smiling about it.

Useless NASS it took them this long to respond useless people