Abia State Governor, Alex Otti, has announced the identification of 11 civil servants involved in pension fraud, vowing to prosecute them next week.
Otti made this declaration during his monthly media chat, “Dr. Alex Otti Speaks to Abians,” in Umuahia on Thursday.
“My question is somebody stole, and I arrested him, and you went to the press to say I shouldn’t arrest a thief. That means you are a thief.
“They are about 10 or 11 From the report I got, some of them are outside the country. We are going to repatriate them to answer to their sins.”
Otti also assured government’s continued sanitization of the civil service.
“We continued with our efforts to sanitize the civil service. I’m sure you would have heard some reports about some civil servants who were involved in pension fraud”.
“We are continuing with their prosecution. I have authorized that in the next few days, they (pension fraud suspects) should be arraigned before the court to come and tell us how come they were stealing from the State.
“From the report I got, about ten or eleven of them. Some of them are outside the country. We are going to repatriate them to answer to the State of their sins,” Otti stated.
Otti criticized defenders of the accused, that Abia State has paid off almost N90 billion of its inherited N191.2 billion debt without borrowing, focusing on infrastructure development, healthcare, education, and security.
The governor emphasized his administration’s zero-tolerance policy for corruption, revealing that some suspects are currently outside the country and will be repatriated soon.
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Jerome Kalu
Jerome Kalu is currently the Senior Correspondent of PIJAlance in Lagos. He was previously the Campus Information Desk (CID) Editor.