Reports have emerged on how the Director-General of the National Pension Commission (PENCOM), Aisha Dahir-Umar received millions of dollars in estacode for foreign trips even during the Covid-19 lockdown.
According to documents sighted on SaharaReporters, the PENCOM boss received millions of dollars in 2019 when she was an acting Director General of PENCOM and continued in 2020 when she was confirmed as the substantive DG.
She received the funds through a Nigeria Uniform Bank Account Number, 20165261012 domiciled with the GTB, used by government officials for internal purposes.
For instance in 2019, specifically on January 3rd, she was paid $1,800,480 in estacode on a Washington DC trip. No specific reason was attached to the trip, which has a transaction reference number 269574350 with Batch number 6309.
Also, in another transaction reference No 366902094 with Batch No 815; Dahir-Umar collected N4,965,327 on 9/01/2020 on airfare to Mauritius for the fourth Pension Fund Africa Conference. On that trip, she collected $259,200.
In the document SaharaReporters obtained, Dahir-Umar pocketed N4,243,116 on 13/03/2020 on airfare to attend Reinventing HR Summit in London and collected an additional N3,077,648 in estacode.
During her tenure as acting DG, from the proceeds of such massive fraud, she purchased a house worth hundreds of millions of Naira located at plot 309, No.20 Adamu Aliero Crescent Guzape Abuja. Also from the travel fraud and other corrupt activities at PENCOM, She bought an N700 million property at No. 53 Nelson Mandela, Asokoro, Abuja.
She has also secretly acquired several assets with family members fronting for her including Millions of Naira paid into accounts of family members. She also has allocated several assets of the commission including cars and uses commission staff to service houses of her relatives and has defrauded the commission of Millions of Naira for the monthly procurement of diesel fuel for two houses belonging to her children.
PenCom Boss, Aisha Dahir-Umar, Denies Involvement
Meanwhile, Aisha Dahir-Umar has denied the above allegations, describing the report as a figment of the imagination of its promoters.
PenCom maintained that Dahir-Umar could not get the ‘humongous estacodes’ even if she spent two years outside the country.
PenCom said, “Management would like to alert the public to the renewed campaign of outrageous falsehood against the National Pension Commission and its Director-General, Mrs Aisha Dahir-Umar, over some imagined financial impropriety.
“Although the promoters of this fiction went to the extent of manufacturing documents and listing non-existent bank accounts to make the fabrication look real, a fiction remains a fiction and can never become the truth no matter how many times it is repeated and recycled.”
The report alleged that the director-general was paid millions of dollars as a travel allowance for foreign trips she did not embark upon in 2020.
