Presidential panel probes 3 permanent secretaries for corruption

By Andrew Orolua, Abuja.

The Special Presidential Investigative Panel for the Recovery of Public Property (SPIPR) is investigating three permanent secretaries over allegations of corruption and abuse of office.

Chairman of the panel, Okoi Obono-Obla, disclosed this in Abuja at a news conference. He said that one of the permanent secretaries bought a house in Asokoro District, Abuja, for over N500 million.

The permanent secretary purchased the said house in the name of her eight-year old son, Obono-Obla disclosed.

Obono-Obla however, declined to name the permanent secretaries, stating that “I don’t want to prejudice investigation, so I won’t mention their names.We got a petition from a whistle-blower about the property. So we have commenced investigation which is yet to be concluded,” adding that investigation of public officers now cover their siblings, relations and fronts.

He also said that the panel has uncovered a female top government functionary who had a registered company through which she has been conducting businesses.

“The other one was alleged to have included projects in the budget of 2017 and 2018 that were fake and also was allegedly collecting money to pay for goods and services that are no more in existence.

“The other permanent secretary, we also got information from a whistle-blower that he has a lot of landed property, including a hotel, in Abuja. From our investigation, he did not declare his assets.

“He was inaugurated as permanent secretary in October 2017 and in accordance with the Code of Conduct Bureau procedure and assets declaration form was given to him to declare his assets.

“We started investigating him since last year and we discovered that he was given the form and he did not return the form to the CCB,” Obono-Obla said.

The chairman further said that the panel has been making a lot of recoveries for the federal government from banks.

“We have continued to recover huge sums of monies from commercial banks being excessive charges that banks had applied on accounts of federal government agencies that were domiciled with them before the introduction of TSA,” he added.

Obono-Obla said that the most recent of the recoveries was over N216 million from a commercial bank, disclosing that “we want to protect the identity of that bank because disclosing it will affect the economy.”