By Dennis Mernyi
Abdulrasheed Abdullahi Maina is a former Chairman of the Pension Reform Task Team (PRTT).
He was finally served justice yesterday as Justice Okon Abang of the Federal High Court, Abuja handed him a 61-year-old jail term for defrauding the Federal Government of N2.1bn after eight years-long legal battle and intrigues.
The judge said Maina was guilty of all the 12 counts filed on October 26, 2019, against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
Justice Abang sentenced him on count one to eight years’ imprisonment, count two to five years’ imprisonment, count three to eight years’ imprisonment, count four to eight years’ imprisonment, count five to three years’ imprisonment, and count six to five years’ imprisonment.
Maina was also convicted on counts seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 and 12 to eight years, three years, five years, eight years, three years and three years respectively with effect from October 26, 2019.
Since the sentences are to run concurrently, Maina will spend only eight years in jail from October 26, 2019, which means he has only five years left.
The court also ordered the forfeiture of Maina’s three landed properties in Abuja and his bulletproof jeeps and cars.
They would be auctioned and the proceeds paid into the accounts of the Federal Government. His company, the Common Input and Property Investment were ordered to refund N1.8bn and $537,983 within 90 days to the Federal Government. Justice Abang also ordered the winding up of the company.
The judge regretted that UBA and Fidelity banks which aided Maina in defrauding the Federal Government were not joined in the charges.
Born and raised in his hometown, Biu Local Government Area of Borno State, Nigeria, Abdulrasheed Maina spent most of his early years in the Northern part of Nigeria.
However, he departed to further his education at other locations outside his hometown.
After completing his basic and secondary school levels, the ex-pension boss, Abdulrasheed Maina furthered in the University and finished with impressive results.
Abdulrasheed Maina is married to Laila Maina and currently has a son, Faisal Maina.
His son was also charged on grounds of fraud allegation of about 58 million nairas and the use of accounts that were termed as conduits for illegal transactions.
Maina is not a social media flick as he is not on any of the social media handles like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and the rest.
The ex-pension boss was charged by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in 2015 and was declared wanted at the time.
Last year, he was also arraigned by a court alongside his son, Faisal Maina for money laundering charges before his extradition from the Niger Republic.
This was made possible after a collective effort from the Nigeria Police Force, INTERPOL NCB, Abuja, and their Nigerien counterpart.
The ex-Chairman of the Nigerian Pension Reform Task Team (PRTT), Abdulrasheed Maina has an estimated net worth of $10,000,000-$100,000,000.
Maina came on board to head the pension task team from a recommendation by Mr Ayo Otepola a personal assistant to the then Head of Service of the Federation, Mr. Stephen Orosanye.
A very craft and intelligent, Maina however, went beyond his brief – changed the designation of his committee and expanded the scope of the team’s assignment beyond just being a once and for all exercise to presidential task force where he awarded contracts worth over N5 billion according to Orosanye who claimed he was not aware how he did it.
During his reign as the chairman of Presidential PRTT, Maina truly lived largely. He indeed lived even larger than his immediate boss, the Head of Civil Service of the Federation.
Maina’s security team was headed by Deputy Superintendent of Police, it’s equivalent from all other security forces like the Civil Defence Corps, operatives of the Department of Secret Service (DSS), the Nigerian Prisons Service now Nigerian Correctional Service, Customs Service, and Immigration Service as well as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the ICPC.
He moved in a full detached convoy between 20 to 25 combined security operatives in not less 10 exotic SUVs anywhere he went within and outside Abuja.
Burly, imposing, and dark-complexioned, Abdulrasheed Maina has a reputation for being light and heavy-fingered all at once.
By the end of 2013, Maina as Chairman of the Presidential Task Team on Pension Reforms (PTTPR) was accused of theft to the tune of N2B in the office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation and was subsequently dismissed by the Federal Civil Service Commission following a recommendation by the Office of the Head of Service.
He was charged by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in 2015 alongside a former Head of Service, Steve Oronsaye, Osarenkhoe Afe, and Fredrick Hamilton before a Federal High Court on a 24-count charge for procuring fraud and acquisition by false pretence.
At the time, the ex-pension boss was declared ‘wanted’ and reportedly went into hiding after a warrant was issued for his arrest by the Nigerian Senate.
According to the allegation lodged by the senate at the time, Maina had defrauded civil servants of their pensions and had diverted pension funds totaling N2B into his personal bank accounts.
Soon after the senate issued an arrest warrant for Maina, the man allegedly fled to Saudi Arabia to evade law enforcement back home.
In November of 2015, EFCC declared Maina a wanted man and launched a manhunt for the former chairman of the PTTPR.
According to multiple reports, Maina often sneaked back into Nigeria between 2013 and 2015 and was often on the run.
The EFCC said Maina had remained at large. He also shunned court summons as the EFCC and police officers scoured the planet for him.
In June of 2016, Maina announced that he had been cleared by the senate of an alleged N195B theft.
Maina said the senate had discovered that the ‘missing’ N195B is in the government’s coffers.
With guts, he also asked for an apology from the nation and from the national assembly, claiming that he was singled out and I suffered so much as a result of the false allegation
According to him, “it is really sad that the same man ( chairman of the senate committee), who told the whole world that I stole N195B has come out to say that the money is intact in Buhari’s TSA account in the CBN. He must pay for destroying my character, integrity, and the loss of my job. I was being haunted all around, and people who had confidence in me thought otherwise of me”.
Maina decried that he had been “maligned, shot at, psychologically traumatized, denied my due entitlement, hounded for serving my country diligently. If this is the reward for serving one’s country, I fear for Nigeria because it would be hard for people to serve this country”. And then he disappeared again there after.
Two years later, Abdulrasheed Maina sneaked into the country and got appointed as the acting director of the Human Resources Department in the Ministry of Interior. This came as a surprise to many and raised a lot of questions from political critics. Eventually, he was fired by President Mohammadu Buhari that same year.
Before his appointment to chair the pension task force, Mr. Maina was an Assistant Director in the ministry.
Yet, with his reputation hanging in the balance, Abdulrasheed Maina was reportedly cleared to run as a governorship candidate for Borno State in 2019. The months which followed saw the arraignment of Maina alongside his son, Faisal for money laundering charges.
The Nigerian Police Force eventually announced the arrest of Abdulrasheed Maina in Niamey, the Niger Republic in December 2020; after a collective effort from the Nigeria Police Force, INTERPOL NCB, Abuja, and their Nigerien counterpart.
He was extradited to Nigeria from Niamey, Niger Republic to face charges in court.
At some point, his family got involved in the looting of the nation’s treasury. His son Faisa Maina was found deep neck into some nefarious deals with his father. He was also arrested and charged alongside him. The Federal High Court in Abuja, had few months ago sentenced Faisa to 14 years’ imprisonment.
The trial judge, Okon Abang had jailed Faisal after finding him guilty on all the three counts of money laundering involving N58.1million in public funds.
Faisal, had also earlier jumped bail like his father and stopped attending court since last year.
The judge, who revoked the defendant’s bail and ordered his arrest to no avail, ordered the trial to proceed in his absence.
Faisal was absent from court when the judge read the judgment convicting him on all the three counts and sentencing him on Thursday.
The judge jailed him for 14 years on counts 2 and for five years on each of counts 1 and 3.
The sentences are also to run concurrently like his father. This implies that the convict who is believed to have fled from Nigeria, would spend 14 years which is the longest jail terms imposed by the judge in prison.
Mr Abang said the agency proved beyond reasonable doubt that Faisal operated a fictitious bank account with the UBA through which his father, Mr Maina, laundered the sum of N58.1million.
The court had also declared that the funds deposited into the account that was operated in the name of Alhaji Faisal Farm 2 were sequentially withdrawn by the convict and his father, between October 2013 and June 2019.
In addition, the court ordered that the 21-year-old Faisal, who had since June 24, 2020, been declared a fugitive after jumping bail, should be arrested anywhere he is found in Nigeria and remanded in any correctional service center to serve his jail term.
The court ordered that the company through which the fund was laundered, Alhaji Faisal Farm 2, be wound up, with funds in it forfeited to the government.
Last February, the EFCC though its prosecuting lawyer, Mohammed Abubakar, told Mr Abang that the convict had fled to the United States (U.S). Mr. Abubakar said EFCC got information that Faisal sneaked to the U.S. through the Republic of Niger.
This development compelled the trial judge, Mr. Abang, to order Faisal’s surety, Sani Dan-Galadima, who is a member of the House of Representatives, to forfeit a property used as a bail bond.
Mr Dan-Galadima who represents Kaura-Namoda Federal Constituency of Zamfara, had entered into a N60 million bail bond on behalf of Faisal.
Maina became a fugitive-offender and was still on the EFCC watch-list when he surreptitiously returned and was reabsorbed into the Civil Service in September 2017.
Since his disgraceful and patently corrupt process was revealed to astonished Nigerians at that time, every one who had directly or indirectly linked to the act has, like Pontius-Pilate, washed their hands off the matter.
From the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, to the Interior Affairs Minister, Abdulrahman Dambazzau, up to the President, Muhammadu Buhari, who Mrs. Winifred Oyo-Ita, the Head of Service would in her own account unknowingly reveal had been warned by her personally not to reabsorb Maina – all of these individuals have denied complicity in the matter.
The ensuing uproar force President Buhari to order the sack of Maina while playing innocent. Since his sack, it then became a game of hide-and-seek between Maina and the law enforcement agents. He still went around with duly assigned security agents for his protection and suddenly disappeared from the hands of the security agents.
From his hideout, he boasted of returning nearly N300 billion, specifically N282 billion in cash to the Buhari administration in 2017 alone. Although he says he fears no man (how ironic for a man in hiding), he wants personal assurances from the president that no harm would come to him should he return home to testify before the law. Maina goes on to promise that he could in nine months produce N3 trillion for the Nigerian government.
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The way Maina, an officer of the rank of deputy director, talked flippantly about trillions of naira left many till today to wonder about his courage.
Maina could tell the official delegation led to him by Malami where to find a secret account with NI trillion locked away in it. In nine months, he would make three more of such accounts available, he says apparently as a bargaining chip.
Maina rose very tall in a manner he got overwhelmed at some point with himself and the manner he went about with his life. Of course, he indeed relish his lifestyle and had reached his crescendo.
His present travails are normal with people who rise in that manner. They fall with a big bang. Maybe, if Maina gets another opportunity, he may live differently. But that is if he will not rise in that form, he will surely fall with a louder bang.
