When the National Pension
Commission (PENCOM) offered Mustapha Ajiya a letter of employment in March
2017, his joy knew no bounds. With two months left to assume duty, he resigned
from his former job and started making preparations towards starting a new career.
Then, Ajiya got a telephone call from the organisation that assumption of the
new employees had been postponed indefinitely on the orders of Aisha
Dahir-Umar, acting director-general of the organisation.
The news didn’t go down well with
the Zamfara indigene. He and his colleagues had written a recruitment test,
done interviews and passed through screening processes from December 2016 to
January 2017. They were finally employed.
According to his colleagues, when
the waiting for assumption seemed endless, Mustapha became emotionally
disturbed. Having made several efforts to prevail on the management of PENCOM
to address their plight, Mustapha slipped into depression, which took a toll on
his health. He died leaving a wife and two children behind.
Mustapha Sadiq, one of the
affected recruits, narrated the experience.
“In line with our letter of
employment, we were to resume duties on May 2 and 5 June 2017, respectively.
However, to our surprise, prior to the date of resumption, we were informed via
telephone calls that our resumption had been postponed indefinitely,” he said.
“Note that upon collection of our
various letters of employment in March 2017 and the resumption dates stipulated
therein, we resigned from our previous places of employment. As such we have
been totally unemployed for over one year now. We have been unable to live up
to our parental and financial obligations and as a result, we have been
subjected to unreasonable psychological trauma.”
Those affected wrote a petition
to Acting President Yemi Osibanjo, appealling to him to address the issue which
is “fast taking its toll on us”.
In response to another letter
written by the affected individuals, the office of the secretary to the
government of the federation said the commission’s decision was based on the
need to allow a review of the earlier recruitment exercise(s) and to ensure
compliance with extant laws and due process.
A staff of PENCOM, however, said
the acting DG deliberately misled the SGF as the employment was approved by
board of the organisation following a due process in line with section 25 (2)
(a) of the Pension Reform Act (2014).
He said, “The truth is that the
acting DG is trying to use the same approval earlier given by the former exco
and the federal character commission to bring in a different people.
“If they claim that the last
batch of appointment was defective, it then means that the two previous batches
of appointment were defective because they went through exactly the same due
process.”
He added that instead of
Dahir-Umar to look into the matter of the new recruit, she increased the
severance/terminal benefits of herself and other the senior management staff by
a 300 percent.
Peter Aghahowa, spokesman of PENCOM, did not
respond to calls and text messages as at the time of filing this report.
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