Panic as REA suspends over seven staff illegally in bid to cover up N1.2b transfer to personal accounts

A Civil Society Organization (CSO), Zero Tolerance for Social Immoralities Initiative (ZETSI), has expressed its concern with the Federal Government’s alleged unfairness against seven Rural Electrification Agency (REA) employees.

The organization alleged in a petition filed against the agency and submitted to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) headquarters in Abuja that the affected employees were unfairly suspended by REA management.

According to a petition signed by the group’s Chairman, Ibrahim Abdulrasaq Imam, and delivered to the NHRC’s Executive Secretary, Anthony Okechukwu Ojukwu, during a demonstration held outside the commission’s headquarters.

The petitioners claimed that the suspended staff were allegedly used to commit fraud by REA authorities between March and June of last year.

ZETSI accused the REA Managing Director, Ahmad Salihijo Ahmad, of being the alleged perpetrator of the fraud while using the personnel as a cover-up.

“The road to their ordeal started last year’s March when the authorities transferred various sums to the tune of N1.2b from the agency’s coffers to personal bank accounts of the said staff members, including Usman Kwakwa Ahmed, who hitherto was seconded from the Accountant-General Office to REA.

“All of the affected staffs are in the account department of REA. The monies were transferred in bit with less than N5 million paid into each staff member’s account at a time in order not to raise suspicions, and masked the fraud.

“The fraudulent scheme, an intrigue to clean out all the remaining 2022 allocation in the agency’s coffers, the narrations for the payments border on project supervisions and adjunct that have no relevant to their job.

“You would notice from the attached document that in total over N202m was paid into Asuni’s account, with N126m, N212.9m, N211.3m, N249.8m and N215.9m laundered through the bank accounts of Karaye(First Bank), Henrietta (Diamond), Titus (FirstBank), Laure (GTB) and Usman Kwakwa Ahmed (GTB & Zenith) respectively.

“Ostensibly acting on instruction from those who made the fraud possible, most of the affected staff members redirected the stolen monies to the accounts of their colleague, Usman Kwakwa Ahmed.

“It became incontrovertible that those staff members were used as conduits for the fraud by the powers-that-be in REA when following the leakage of the heist to the media and the ensuing reportage, the Managing Director, Ahmad Salihijo Ahmad in an attempt to exonerate himself and some of his colleagues at the top set up a Disciplinary Committee headed by the Executive Director, Corporate Services, Mr Olaniyi Netufo,” the petition read in part.