Adamawa House summons accountant-general over pension mone

The News

Adamawa House of Assembly has summoned the State’s Accountant General to appear before it over alleged diversion of pension fund, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.

The House, which made the summon during plenary session presided over by the Deputy Speaker, Mr Laori Kwamoti, in Yola on Monday, said the accountant general should appear before it on Tuesday to brief members on the issue.

Kwamoti said the House received information that the State Government used pensioners’ money to settle the entitlements and severance allowances of some members of the legislature now on suspension.

“We have just received an information which is quite unfortunate that the state government has dipped it hands in the pension fund depriving pensioners of their entitlements.

“The state government put its hands, removed money from the pension fund and paid the entitlement and severance gratuity of members that were suspended.

“By our rules, they (suspended lawmakers) are not entitled to those benefits…We cannot sit in this hallow chambers and allow this type of behaviour to continue.

“In this respect, we are directing that the Accountant General should appear before this House tomorrow and explain…’’, Kwamoti said.

The House also received and adopted a report from its Ad-Hoc Committee that investigated a petition by some farmers against Gov Bala Ngilari over the utilization of N2billion Federal Government Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme (CACS).

The report said that it had established that neither the registered farmers’ cooperative societies/unions in Adamawa that requested for the loan benefitted from the credit scheme.

The House, among others, recommended that the state government should refund the N2billion it collected from Central Bank to be utilized for the purpose intended, otherwise the EFCC should investigate the matter.