The National Pension Commission has referred to reports that its Director-General, Mrs. Aisha Dahir-Umar, received millions of dollars in salary as estacode during the Covid-19 lockout in 2020 as blatant fabrication and fiction.
According to Nairametrics, the commission’s response was prompted by online rumours that it had spent as much as Estacode in 2020 and by additional assertions that there were records proving how the funds were transferred into her account.
This admission was made public by PenCom in a statement published on the commission’s official Twitter account on Sunday, July 30, 2023.
The National Pension Commission and its Director General, Mrs. Aisha Dahir-Umar, are once again the target of a campaign of flagrant lies about purported financial irregularities.
Although the advocates of this fiction went so far as to fabricate documents and mention non-existent bank accounts to make the fabrication appear real, fiction remains fiction and can never become the truth no matter how many times it is repeated and recycled.
‘The Director General is believed to have received millions of dollars in escrow payments for international trips she did not take in 2020.
The fact that there was a global lockdown in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, during which foreign movement was prohibited, exposes this feeble attempt at slander. The majority of people had to arrange virtual meetings because offices were closed.
“Therefore, it is ridiculous to argue that any government agency would assert that it was paying its employees for overseas travel while most airports were closed across the world.”
The committee continued, “More so, official international travel calls for stringent documentation, including airline tickets, pages of passport that have been stamped, and proof of several days spent.
‘’We are aware of the current political intrigues in the country brought on by the competition for positions, but we think there are more honourable ways to handle the situation than using infamous online platforms to spread false information to gullible readers.
“The general public is urged to disregard these fictitious documents and the debunked claims that are continually rehashed.”
The report added that the commission will continue to operate a transparent and accountable system because it has nothing to hide.
