Juliet Akoje in Abuja
Some Commissioners of the Federal Character Commission (FCC) yesterday accused the Executive Chairman of the Commission, Muheeba Dankaka, of nepotism, corruption and highhandedness.
They made the accusation during their appearance before the House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee probing the Mismanagement of Personnel Recruitment, Employment Racketeering and Gross Mismanagement of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).
The Ad-hoc Committee which was chaired by Hon Yusuf Gagdi, is saddled with the responsibility to probe Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) as well as tertiary institutions of the federal government.
The Chairman of the Commission, Mureeba Dankaka while responding to the accusations levelled against her by some of the Commissioners of the commission said the Commissioners lied against her because she refused to do their bidding, including selling slots for employment.
Moses Anaughe, who the Commissioner representing Delta State, had accused Dankaka of collecting 10 per cent from MDAs who came for employment and also accused her of giving “juicy” jobs to her children.
While accusing her of signing appointment letters for 24 ghost workers, he said “If there is any request for recruitment, the Chairman of Federal Character, Dr Dankaka will request the Chief Executives to come to her office and discuss 10 per cent. She does collect 10 per cent from all MDAs of all the employment she is signing. All those 10 per cent she collects, those are the slots that she employs agents that are selling.
“I have two employment letters here of her children in juicy agencies where the annual salary is N6.1 million, the other one is N8.2 million. I have the appointment letters here. And I just also want to inform this committee, if she finds any agency doing employment that is paying more than these MDAs, she will move them to that MDA. She moves them from MDA to MDA.”
He further alleged that there were, “letters of appointments she signed for 24 ghost workers. I call them ghost workers because they are receiving salary after paying for the job and when they get the appointment letter, they also refuse to resume work.
“I have the account numbers. If this committee requests for the account statements of all these transactions of jobs selling of the agents of the chairman, it will receive all of them.
“She has a lot of agents selling slots for her. After selling they have a central pool where they remit all the monies to, whereby they will withdraw and collect dollars and give to her. I have all the account details here. In my submission, we have a lot of things to reveal.”
Also, the Commissioner representing Nasarawa State, Mamman Alakaye, in his submission said, “I align myself totally with all the documents submitted in respect of the issue at stake. I want to however add more that we couldn’t have gotten to this point if the chairman was a listening chairman. We have taken far reaching steps to internally resolve these issues; to draw her attention to follow procedures and rules, but she wouldn’t listen.
“She rather wants to operate as a sole administrator. She has always said nobody will touch her. This she said verbally.
“Mr Chairman, I want to tender a document to support what my colleagues have said so far. For example, her son was employed in NCC, which I am aware of. Just last week she transferred him from the NCC to Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission. He did his documentation with IPPIS just this week. I have the document to tender.”
The Osun State Commissioner, Abdulrazak Adeoye also said, “She surreptitiously removed the name of the Nigerians from the pay roll of FCC and replaced them without the knowledge of most commissioners. We regard ourselves as an integrity group.
“We are Nigerians who stand clearly against the illegality of the things that will not help the country as a whole. We wrote a petition in our capacity as commissioners to DSS requesting for covert investigation into this mess that we are not happy. The elder sister of the FCC chair was fingered. Her phone number is here.”
Dankaka while responding said, “I now believe the adage that says when you fight corruption, corruption will fight back. Some of them have reasons why they are attacking me. When I first came in, most of them were my close people around here. Osun is always in my office.”
However, the Committee summoned the Director General of the Budget Office and the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation over the issue.
Gagdi said no stone would be left unturned in dealing with the problem of personnel recruitment, employment racketeering and the mismanagement of the IPPIS and further assured that the Committee would do a comprehensive job.
He insisted that anyone found culpable would be dealt with in accordance with the law.
