While the Federal Government has adopted and placed incentives for
whistle blowing as a means of fighting corruption in the country, top
government officials have slapped the government policy by terminating
the career of an assistant director, who raised the alarm that the sum
of $229,000 and N800,000 had been diverted by key officials in the
Directorate of Technical Cooperation in Africa, an agency under the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The whistle blower, Mr. Ntia
Thompson, an assistant director with the Directorate for Technical
Cooperation in Africa, who blew the lid in the fraud that embarrassed
the key masterminds, was initially suspended from work on December 19,
2016 and was finally dismissed from service on February 7, 2017.
According
to a public notice, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Khadija
Bukar Abba Ibrahim, who supervises the DTCA, approved the compulsory
retirement of Ntia from work with immediate effect.
Although it
was not clear as at last night if the letter had been served on the
sacked director, a copy of the notice of his dismissal had been posted
on the DTCA public notice board.
The sack letter signed by Sanda
S. Isah, Head of Administration Department in DTCA and addressed to all
staff, said, “I am directed to inform you that following the
recommendations of the Senior Staff Appointment Promotion and
Disciplinary Committee on Acts of Serious Misconduct against Mr. Ntia U.
Thompson, the Honourable Minister of State, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
and Chairman Presidential Inter-Ministerial Committee on the DTCA, has
approved the Compulsory Retirement of Mr. Ntia U. Thompson from the
services of the DTCA with effect from 7th February 2017.
“In view of the above, Mr. Ntia U Thompson ceased to be a staff of the DTCA with effect from 7th February 2017.
“All members of staff and the general public are hereby advised to take note”.
The letter was signed and placed on the public notice of the DTCA on Friday with a handwritten instruction ‘Please Read’.
However,
competent staff within the agency, who believe that the money in
question was actually diverted wonder why both the police and the
anti-graft agency whose attention was drawn to the fraud, turned a blind
eye to the inimical act and allowed the suspects to go scot-free and
boldly unleash their fangs on the victim.
Competent senior
officials in the DTCA provided documents to allege some of the 14-member
panel raised by the government to probe the allegations of breaching
service rules levelled against the whistleblower could have been
compromised.
The officials provided a list of 11 new senior staff
hurriedly employed by the leadership of the DTCA without advertisement
or declaration of vacancies by the directorate in order to silence the
panellists and get them to ease out the whistleblower from the
establishment.
The document shows that the 11 ‘new staff’ were all
employed as either Administrative Officer or Accounts Officer on the
same date of December 30, 2016, just a day to the end of the year.
The
officials confirmed that the new employees are either direct children
or relatives of the panel members who were supposed to interview Mr.
Thompson and write a report based on the civil service regulations and
decide on whether he should be commended for the act of patriotism which
he showed by reporting the diversion of the money in question.
One
of the officials in the DTCA said, “If the government wants to know the
truth about the identities of the 11 new staff and their relationship
with the members of the panel that recommended the dismissal of Mr.
Thompson, it should ask for the names of the new workers, their state of
origin and their parents and see if they are related to the panellists.
“We
have all the names and we can give them to the government any time they
are ready to do proper investigation to know if the right thing was
done and whether a minister and other top officials benefitted from the
diverted cash or not,” one of the aggrieved workers at DTCA said.
It
was not clear whether the sack of the staff would be approved by the
Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, which has not
been informed of the ugly development.
Whistle blowing a new
concept introduced by the present administration to horn in graft, has
reportedly led to the recovery of billions of Naira so far but it is not
clear why many top government officials are frontally opposed to it.
It
will he recalled that Ntia, as assistant director in charge of Servicom
Unit at the DTCA had written a petition to the EFCC last December
drawing attention to the surreptitious withdrawal of the sum of $229,000
and another N800,000 from the agency’s account purportedly for the
purpose of celebrating the the tenth anniversary of the Nigerian
Technical Cooperation Fund (NTCF) which was allocated $36,852.00, and
monitoring of various projects executed from the Trust Fund across
Africa.
However, when Ntia got wind of the diversion of the fund,
he immediately reported the ugly development to the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission asking it to investigate the fraud .
Findings
showed that although the EFCC waded into the matter and compelled the
affected officials to refund the sum of N800,000, no further action was
taken against the officials to refund the $229,000 which they had
already taken.
But a few days after the EFCC had begun
investigation into the scam, the whistle blower was summoned by the DTCA
and queried on why he leaked official documents to the anti-graft
agency and the media thereby exposing the agency to embarrassment.
Arising
from the police report, the DTCA on December 19, 2016 formally
suspended Mr. Thompson from work and asked him to surrender all property
in his disposal to the agency with immediate effect. The suspension
letter with ref. No. DTCA/P.082 Vol 1 was entitled, “Letter of
suspension from duty” and signed by Sanda Isah, Head, Department of
Administration/Secretary SSAPDC.
The letter said, “You will recall
that you indulged in a series of acts of serious misconduct bordering
on “violation of official oath of secrecy”, “absence from duty without
leave” and “disobeying lawful instructions from superiors”. “Even though
these acts were established to be heinous violation of the provisions
of Chapter 3, Section 4, Rules 030402 (e, f, I, n, t, and w), management
considered and meted on you the compassionate penalties of “letter of
reprimand, letter of serious warning, and a query for abandoning
official duties in defiance of lawful instructions from superiors,
respectively. Yet, these infractions did not abate.
“It will also
be recalled that on the 14th of July 2016, you wrote a petition to the
Inspector General of Police in which you alleged threat to your life and
that of your family members by the Acting Director-General, Mr.
Mohammed Kachallah and Mallam Garba Alhaji Mohammed, Head of Programme
Management of DTCA.
“In view of the weighty nature of this
allegation, the police carried out a thorough inquest into the matter
and turned in the final report. The report exonerated the two officers
mentioned in the allegation of criminal intimidation thereby
establishing that you made “false claims against government officials”.
“Against
the backdrop of these serious infractions, the Inter-Ministerial
meeting of the Senior Staff Appointment, Promotion and Disciplinary
Committee met and looked into these issues in line with the provisions
of the PSR. The committee recommended for your suspension from office
pending the outcome of a final report of a sub-committee set up on the
matter.
“In view of the above, you are hereby suspended from
office immediately in line with the provisions of Chapter 3, Section 4,
Rules 030205 and 030406 of the PSR. You are therefore directed to hand
over all official documents/properties in your possession to the most
senior officer in the unit.”
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