The Federal Government paid over N5.64 million into the bank account of a deceased pensioner after his family had been initially paid all his entitlements.
This revelation was contained in the April 2018 monthly report of the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate submitted to the Federal Ministry of Finance.
The report provides a summary of PTAD’s key achievements and performance on its pension payments for the month and the directorate’s activities in general.
In the report, PTAD explained that the pensioner, whose identity was not disclosed, died in 2012 and all his benefits were paid to his next of kin.
However, Federal Government continued to credit the deceased’s bank account domiciled in Unity Bank PLC following an erroneous manual computation, leading to an accumulation of over N5.64 million in the account.
“He was manually computed and paid the above amount,” PTAD stated, adding that investigations showed that the funds were “rightly due to PTAD.”
The report revealed that following a garnishee order served on the bank in respect of funds, “Unity Bank has successfully transferred the full said amount to the directorate’s account.”
Speaking to pension reporters recently, the Executive Secretary of PTAD, Barrister Sharon Ikeazor, said a challenge that needed to be addressed is the situation where a pensioner will die, the family of the deceased will not report the death to PTAD and the Federal Government will continue paying pension into the account of the deceased.
She said though there are good Nigerians that promptly reported deaths of pensioners and request that their pension should be stopped, there were family members of other deceased pensioners that do not report.
She said such family members used their deceased pensioners’ ATM cards to withdraw the pension until such cards become faulty.
The PTAD boss said the directorate is on the verge of developing combo cards for pensioners, which will require them to periodically use them as proof of life.
She said pensioners’ biometrics, being captured during verification exercises, would be deployed to develop the combo cards to ensure that only the pensioners themselves used the cards to prove that they are alive from their various locations across the world.
Meanwhile, the Federal Government has suspended the pension of 24,021 retirees that did not come forward for the verification between 2015 and 2018.
Ikeazor said the directorate was careful not to label them as “ghost” pensioners as some of them may be resident outside the country.
She said pensioners living abroad should go to the nearest Nigerian Embassy to them and fill a proof of life form for them to be payrolled again.
Over 30,000 retirees, who were not on pension over the years have been cleared and added to Federal Government’s payroll after verification of civil service, police, customs, immigration and prisons pensioners in the country.
On fraud, the PTAD said it had recorded an attempt by an individual to defraud the government of pension using forged documents.
The report seen by Daily Trust highlighted how an investigation carried out on the documents of a Civil Service Pension Department (CSPD) pensioner revealed that both his severance pay slip and gazette of confirmation of 1st appointment submitted during CSPD verification in Ondo State appeared to be fake.
Speaking on PTAD’s efforts in curbing pension fraud, Ikeazor said the directorate, in collaboration with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), recently arrested a fraudster, who specialised in swindling pensioners by calling them and requesting money to speed up their pension payment process.
