House Faults PTAD’s Use Of Agents To Recover £25m

By Oduyemi Odumade

The House of Representatives Committee on Finance has queried the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate, PTAD, on the payment of over N400 million to agents to recover about £25 million in invested funds by the agency in the United Kingdom.

Chairman of the House Committee James Faleke, issued the query at the ongoing Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper MTEF/FSP interactive with Ministries, Departments and Agencies at the National Assembly.

The lawmaker had asked why the agency would engage the services of agents to repatriate the funds invested with Crown Agents of the United Kingdom with such amount against international best  practices on funds recovery.

He quizzed the agency officials if it was right to waste pensioners and tax payers money on such recovery on agents whereas the global practice is to use the staff of the legal department of the agency for such recoveries.

According to him, the House Committee is concerned about the plight of pensioners in the country who are supposed to be benefitiaries of such invested funds but are being owed many months of arrears of salaries and even allowances by the agency.

“PTAD is not a revenue generating agency but there is this fund that is meant for pensioners that we are concerned about”.

“How do you use recovery agent to recover such funds. It was alleged that retirees are being owed about N30 million in pension arrears”.

The Executive Secretary of PTAD, Dr Chioma Ejikeme, however stated that the funds in question was meant to be transferred to the Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria and the Federal Civil Service Commission.

According to her, the agency in 2018 got a presidential approval to transfer the funds from the Crown Agents to the agency.

Dr Ejikeme added that the agency used one Million pounds out of the recovered funds to offset the liabilities of some privatized government agencies.

Edited By Grace Namiji