Oronsaye Operated 66 Illegal Accounts – Witness

Alex Enumah in Abuja

A prosecution witness, Rouqayya Ibrahim, in the trial of former Head of Service, Stephen Orosaye, on Tuesday stated before a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja how Oronsaye’s office operated 66 illegal accounts.

Ibrahim, an operative of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), made the revelation at the resumed trial of Oronsaye over alleged corrupt offences.

The EFCC dragged Nigeria’s former head of Service, Mr. Stephen Oronsaye, and four others before Justice Gabriel Kolawole of a Federal High Court, Abuja, over an amended 35-count charge of corruption.

Others charged by the Commission are: Cluster Logistics Limited, Kangolo Dynamic Cleaning Limited, and Drew Investment & Construction Company Limited. Osarenkhoe Afe is the managing director of Fredrick Hamilton Global Services Limited.
The witness who disclosed that she was drafted to be part of the team that investigated the pension fund said, “Sometime in 2010, EFCC and other anti-graft agencies were invited for verification of pension in the civil service. During that time, my colleagues discovered a payment mandate for payment of pensioners bearing 32 names, which was suspicious to them and based on that, they requested for further information on the mandate and the statement of account from the office of the Head of Service.

“It was confirmed that some of the names on that list were fake pensioners. Based on that, EFCC instituted a pension fraud team to properly investigate activities of the Head of Service in terms of pension payment.

Speaking further, the witness said that the team wrote letters to all the existing banks at the time to furnish them with the statement of account of all the accounts operated by the Head of Service for pensioners and also payment mandate.

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