Just as the Chairman
of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, Prof Itse Sagay,
Thursday took a swipe at two agencies of the administration for still engaging
in untidy deals, President Mohammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption fight has taken
more knocks, it was revealed yesterday.
While the Federal Govern-ment has
adopted and placed incentives for whistle blowing as a means of fighting
corruption in the country, top government officials have slapped the government
policy by terminating the career of an assistant director, who raised the alarm
that the sum of $229,000 and N800,000 had been diverted by key officials in the
Directorate of Technical Cooperation in Africa, an agency under the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs.
The whistle blower, Mr. Ntia Thompson, an assistant director
with the Directorate for Technical Cooperation in Africa, who blew the lid in
the fraud that embarrassed the key masterminds, was initially suspended from
work on December 19, 2016 and was finally dismissed from service on February 7,
2017.
Whistle-blowers According to a public notice, the Minister of State for
Foreign Affairs, KHADIJA BUKAR ABBA IBRAHIM, who supervises the DTCA, approved
the compulsory retirement of Ntia from work with immediate effect. Although it
was not clear as at last night if the letter had been served on the sacked
director, a copy of the notice of his dismissal had been posted on the DTCA
public notice board.
The sack letter signed by Sanda S. Isah, Head of
Administration Department in DTCA and addressed to all staff, said, “ I am
directed to inform you that following the recommendations of the Senior Staff
Appointment Promotion and Disciplinary Committee on Acts of Serious Misconduct
against Mr. Ntia U. Thompson, the Honourable Minister of State, Ministry of
Foreign Affairs and Chairman Presidential Inter-Ministerial Committee on the DTCA,
has approved the Compulsory Retirement of Mr. Ntia U. Thompson from the
services of the DTCA with effect from 7th February 2017. “In view of the above,
Mr. Ntia U Thompson ceased to be a staff of the DTCA with effect from 7th
February 2017.
“All members of staff and the general public are hereby advised
to take note”. The letter was signed and placed on the public notice of the
DTCA on Friday with a handwritten instruction ‘Please Read’.
However, competent
staff within the agency, who believe that the money in question was actually
diverted wonder why both the police and the anti-graft agency whose attention
was drawn to the fraud, turned a blind eye to the inimical act and allowed the
suspects to go scot-free and boldly unleash their fangs on the victim.
Competent senior officials in the DTCA provided documents to allege some of the
14-member panel raised by the government to probe the allegations of breaching
service rules levelled against the whistleblower could have been compromised.
The officials provided a list of 11 new senior staff hurriedly employed
by the leadership of the DTCA without advertisement or declaration of vacancies
by the directorate in order to silence the panellists and get them to ease out
the whistleblower from the establishment. The document shows that the 11 ‘new
staff’ were all employed as either Administrative Officer or Accounts Officer
on the same date of December 30, 2016, just a day to the end of the year. The
officials confirmed that the new employees are either direct children or
relatives of the panel members who were supposed to interview Mr. Thompson and
write a report based on the civil service regulations and decide on whether he
should be commended for the act of patriotism which he showed by reporting the
diversion of the money in question.
One of the officials in the DTCA said, “If
the government wants to know the truth about the identities of the 11 new staff
and their relationship with the members of the panel that recommended the
dismissal of Mr. Thompson, it should ask for the names of the new workers,
their state of origin and their parents and see if they are related to the
panellists. “We have all the names and we can give them to the government any
time they are ready to do proper investigation to know if the right thing was
done and whether a minister and other top officials benefitted from the
diverted cash or not,” one of the aggrieved workers at DTCA said. It was not
clear whether the sack of the staff would be approved by the Office of the Head
of the Civil Service of the Federation, which has not been informed of the ugly
development.
Whistle blowing a new concept introduced by the present
administration to horn in graft, has reportedly led to the recovery of billions
of Naira so far but it is not clear why many top government officials are
frontally opposed to it. It will he recalled that Ntia, as assistant director
in charge of Servicom Unit at the DTCA had written a petition to the EFCC last
December drawing attention to the surreptitious withdrawal of the sum of
$229,000 and another N800,000 from the agency’s account purportedly for the
purpose of celebrating the the tenth anniversary of the Nigerian Technical
Cooperation Fund (NTCF) which was allocated $36,852.00, and monitoring of
various projects executed from the Trust Fund across Africa. However, when Ntia
got wind of the diversion of the fund, he immediately reported the ugly
development to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission asking it to
investigate the fraud .
Findings showed that although the EFCC waded into the
matter and compelled the affected officials to refund the sum of N800,000, no
further action was taken against the officials to refund the $229,000 which
they had already taken. But a few days after the EFCC had begun investigation
into the scam, the whistle blower was summoned by the DTCA and queried on why
he leaked official documents to the anti-graft agency and the media thereby
exposing the agency to embarrassment. Arising from the police report, the DTCA
on December 19, 2016 formally suspended Mr. Thompson from work and asked him to
surrender all property in his disposal to the agency with immediate effect.
The
suspension letter with ref. No. DTCA/P.082 Vol 1 was entitled, “Letter of
suspension from duty” and signed by Sanda Isah, Head, Department of
Administration/Secretary SSAPDC.
The letter said, “You will recall that you
indulged in a series of acts of serious misconduct bordering on “violation of
official oath of secrecy”, “absence from duty without leave” and “disobeying
lawful instructions from superiors”. “Even though these acts were established
to be heinous violation of the provisions of Chapter 3, Section 4, Rules 030402
(e, f, I, n, t, and w), management considered and meted on you the
compassionate penalties of “letter of reprimand, letter of serious warning, and
a query for abandoning official duties in defiance of lawful instructions from
superiors, respectively.
Yet, these infractions did not abate. “It will also be
recalled that on the 14th of July 2016, you wrote a petition to the Inspector
General of Police in which you alleged threat to your life and that of your
family members by the Acting Director-General, Mr. Mohammed Kachallah and
Mallam Garba Alhaji Mohammed, Head of Programme Management of DTCA. “In view of
the weighty nature of this allegation, the police carried out a thorough
inquest into the matter and turned in the final report. The report exonerated
the two officers mentioned in the allegation of criminal intimidation thereby
establishing that you made “false claims against government officials”.
“Against the backdrop of these serious infractions, the Inter-Ministerial
meeting of the Senior Staff Appointment, Promotion and Disciplinary Committee
met and looked into these issues in line with the provisions of the PSR.
The
committee recommended for your suspension from office pending the outcome of a
final report of a sub-committee set up on the matter. “In view of the above,
you are hereby suspended from office immediately in line with the provisions of
Chapter 3, Section 4, Rules 030205 and 030406 of the PSR. You are therefore
directed to hand over all official documents/properties in your possession to
the most senior officer in the unit.”
By Sonia Daniel
By Sonia Daniel
