Financial Impropriety: PenCom Dispels Rumours

The management of National Pension Commission (PenCom) has alerted the public to the renewed campaign of outrageous falsehood against it and its Director-General, Mrs Aisha Dahir-Umar, over some imagined financial impropriety.

“Although the promoters of this fiction went to the extent of manufacturing documents and listing non-existent bank accounts to make the fabrication look real, a fiction remains a fiction and can never become the truth no matter how many times it is repeated and recycled”, the commission stated.

A statement by the management of the commission stated that it was alleged that the director-general was paid millions of dollars as estacodes for foreign trips she did not embark upon in 2020.

This poor attempt at calumny, according to Pencom, was exposed by the fact that there was a global lockdown in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic during which international travels were restricted. Offices, it said, were shut down and most people had to hold virtual meetings.

“It is, thus, most outlandish to suggest that any government agency would claim to be paying allowances to its officials for international travels when most airports were shut down globally.

More so, official foreign trips require strict documentation, including air tickets, stamped passport pages and evidence of number of days spent. Rates for estacodes are standardised.

“If the DG were to spend two years abroad without returning to the country for one day, it would still be impossible for her to claim a million dollars as estacode.” the commission added.

Pencom claimed that the desperate fabricators needed to respect the intelligence of Nigerians.

“We are aware of current political intrigues in the country caused by the jostling for appointments, but we believe there are more decent ways of going about it than peddling tales by moonlight and using notorious online outlets to push the lies to unsuspecting readers.

“The public is implored to ignore these fake documents and the discredited allegations being recycled at the slightest opportunity”, it stated.

Pencom further declared that the commission had nothing to hide and would continue to run a transparent and accountable system.