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Two payment vouchers tell the story. Voucher 1001111874, raised on 1 November 2023, paid N53,532,000 to Mabon Limited as rent for PTAD headquarters for 2023/2024. Voucher 1001132924, raised on 18 December 2023, paid N41,041,200 to Mabon Estates Limited as rent for PTAD headquarters for 2023/2024. Same headquarters. Same rental year. Two different companies. SecretsReporters examined the official payment records of the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate for 2023 and found a directorate that paid N94,573,200 in rent for one office for one year, in two payments, six weeks apart, to two landlords whose names differ by a single word.
Two rents, one headquarters, one year
The two payments were not instalments to one landlord. Company records at the Corporate Affairs Commission examined by SecretsReporters show that Mabon Limited, RC 57119, registered in 1983, and Mabon Estates Limited, RC 604859, registered in 2004, are entirely separate legal entities, incorporated twenty one years apart. The payment records carry no credit note, no refund, no second premises and no explanation for the second rent. One headquarters cannot owe the same year’s rent twice. Section 38 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007 binds every government agency to apply public money only as appropriated and only for value received, and the Financial Regulations bar the certification of a second payment for an obligation already settled, placing responsibility for any loss that follows on the officers who passed the voucher. The directorate paid the same rent twice, and N94,573,200 of public money went out on it.
The rent pair sits squarely inside Dr Chioma Ejikeme’s time in office. She became Executive Secretary of the directorate in August 2019. Her first term expired on 28 August 2023, when she handed over to Sulayman Shelleng, the Director of Civil Service Pension Department, who ran the directorate in an acting capacity. President Bola Tinubu reappointed her with effect from 10 October 2023, and she resumed at the headquarters on 23 October 2023 for a second term that ran until her removal in November 2024. Both rent payments, on 1 November and 18 December 2023, were made after she returned to the office.
The London course on accountability
On 27 June 2023, inside her first term, the directorate paid Omphalos Consulting N60,102,772.56 in two lines carried on a single voucher. The first line, N33,116,279.08, is described as a course fee for training on building a culture of accountability in London. The second line, N26,986,493.48, is described only as a course fee to the same firm. Company records show Omphalos Consulting was registered on 19 April 2021, two years and two months before the payment. Sections 16 and 25 of the Public Procurement Act 2007 require consultancy engagements of this size to be awarded through competitive selection, on published criteria, to firms that meet the Act’s eligibility requirements. Section 43 of the same Act prohibits the splitting of a procurement into smaller parts to defeat the thresholds and approvals the Act prescribes. One firm’s one-day bill of N60,102,772.56, divided into two lines on one voucher, is the pattern that provision was written against.
The training payment that does not belong to her
One payment in this account does not belong to Dr Ejikeme at all, and the record must say so plainly. On 26 September 2023, the directorate paid Wisecrack Consult N47,615,000 for consultancy services for training for all staff. Dr Ejikeme was not in office that day. Her first term had expired on 28 August 2023, Sulayman Shelleng held the directorate as acting Executive Secretary, and her reappointment took effect only on 10 October 2023. The payment is recorded here because it belongs to the same pattern of training money that ran through the directorate in 2023, and because company records show Wisecrack Consult was registered on 1 June 2021, two years and three months before it received N47,615,000 from an agency whose substantive head was away from the seat. It is not charged to her.
The Executive Secretary collects estacode in her own name
On 26 June 2023, one day before the Omphalos Consulting lines, the records show N10,186,881.12 paid to Dr Chioma Ejikeme by name, described in full as estacode for international training. The description names no country, no institution and no dates of travel. Under the Financial Regulations, estacode is an advance paid at prescribed rates for an approved journey, and it must be retired afterwards with evidence that the journey was undertaken. Nothing in the payment records shows what training the Executive Secretary attended, where it held, or how the N10,186,881.12 paid into her own name was retired.
The carousel below N10 million
Beneath the big tickets, a steady carousel of repeat purchases turned all year, each item priced below N10 million. Onnan Unity Company Limited received N8,713,800 for laptop computers on 20 April 2023 and a second N8,713,800, identical to the kobo, for laptop computers on 30 December 2023. On 12 October 2023, two lines of a single voucher paid Ghumbili Global Nig Limited N8,687,950 and Nasaim Golden Investment Nig Limited N8,640,950, both for office stationery. Devcom Integrated Services Limited supplied the directorate’s diesel three times: 9,000 litres for N8,206,200 on 6 June 2023, at N911.80 a litre; 9,000 litres for N7,867,800 on 18 August 2023, at N874.20 a litre; and 5,000 litres for N6,674,000 on 19 December 2023, at N1,334.80 a litre, a price 46 per cent above what the same directorate paid the same supplier in June. Identical sums to the kobo, repeat vendors, paired lines on single vouchers and staggered dates run through the whole carousel, the same anatomy of divided purchasing that Section 43 of the Public Procurement Act 2007 forbids.
In a single year, the records of the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate show N94,573,200 paid twice over for one headquarters, N60,102,772.56 to a firm two years and two months old for a London course on accountability, N47,615,000 to another firm two years and three months old for staff training, N10,186,881.12 in estacode paid to the Executive Secretary in her own name, and a carousel of purchases held just below N10 million turning underneath them all. The directorate exists to administer the pensions of retired federal workers under the Defined Benefit Scheme.
Source: …Secretsreporters