The current management of the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) has dismissed media reports that termite destroyed payment vouchers and a N17 billion infraction at the organization.
In a statement on Thursday, the agency said the reports which it described as false, were attributed to a recent Senate Public Accounts Committee Hearing, probing the 2018 Audit Report of the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation (AUGF) on N17.15 billion out of the nearly total of N58bn, which was misappropriated from the Fund between 2012- 2015.
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It said: “We wish to officially make it clear without any shred of doubt that these financial infractions have nothing to do with the current management which is just a year old. They were rather financial violations and sleazes committed by the former management and board who supervised the affairs of our organisation between 2012 and 2017.”
The current management of NSITF in the statement also said some members of the present management team were not even staff members of the organisation when the infractions happened.
“However, knowing full well that government is a continuum, we presented ourselves before the Senate Committee as well as rendered every assistance necessary for it to carry out its statutory oversight functions.”
It said when the Senate Committee initiated the current probe in 2021, the management set up an internal committee to retrieve from First Bank and Skye Bank (now Polaris) and that the documents were subsequently submitted to the Senate Committee.
It also said it invited the previous officials including the former Managing Directors – Munir Abubakar (2010-2016), Ismail Agaka (2016-2017) and Bayo Somefun (2017-2020) under whose tenures these infractions as reported in the Auditor General’s Report took place, to respond to some of the questions raised in the reports of 2018 which the Senate is probing.
NSITF noted that the circumstance under which reference was made to termites, when one of the past Managing Directors had claimed that the vouchers for the N5bn payment made in 2013 would still be in a container in the compound of the fund.
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