By Emmanuel Nduka
Nigeria’s anti-graft agency, the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) has opened investigation into the federal payroll fraud allegedly committed by President Muhammadu Buhari’s aide for New Media, Bashir Ahmad.
Peoples Gazette reports that the ICPC confirmed on Monday afternoon that Ahmad’s action had been brought to it’s attention by way of HEDA Resource Centre, a public-interest think-tank run by anti-corruption campaigner Lanre Suraju.
“We received a complaint and we have commenced an investigation. Our investigation is preliminary at this stage in order to establish accuracy of the information we received and then we take it from there,” ICPC spokeswoman Azuka Ogugua said on Monday.
Meanwhile, Ogugua did not immediately give a timeline of her agency’s investigation, but an anti-graft official familiar with the matter said Ahmad would soon be invited for questioning about the fraud.
HEDA’s petition was triggered by The Gazette’s report of August 15, 2022, which detailed how Ahmad defrauded Nigerian taxpayers to the tune of millions after leaving office as a presidential media aide .
Ahmad who said he had resigned from office in May in order to seek the ruling party’s House of Reps ticket in his home Kano State, was still under the payroll of the Presidency, as he received salaries through May, June and July.
Within the said period, he received at least N3,129,530.64 in fraudulent basic earnings, with his allowances and estacodes likely many times the salaries.
The who was recently reappointed by President Buhari after failing to pick the ticket to run for parliamentary elections, told The Gazette that he refunded the illicit payments in full to the federal coffers for the months he was not an official.
