The Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke, has
ordered the General Manager, Operations/Corporate Services, Petroleum
Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA, Wole Adamolekun, to
immediately proceed on retirement.
A copy of the letter conveying the minister’s directive, sighted by
our reporter in Abuja, and signed by the agency’s Assistant General
Manager/Head, Administration, Moses Mbaba, directed Mr. Adamolekun to
quit latest December 31, 2013.
A ministerial personnel audit panel constituted early in 2013 to
verify the service records of workers in five parastatals under the
supervision of the Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources reportedly
indicted Mr. Adamolekun along with several other top oil industry
management staff for allegedly falsifying their service records.
PREMIUM TIMES had reported the sack of 10 of the affected officials
in the Petroleum Technology Development Fund, PTDF, in October 2013.
The audit, which involved the physical verification of the workers’
original certificates and other documents, was conducted by a team led
by the then Permanent Secretary in the ministry, Goddy Onwughalu.
The team, which uncovered several cases of records falsification,
including forgery and discrepancies in declared age certificates,
recommended Mr. Adamolekun for immediate removal from office for
overstaying his position as director.
The Federal Civil Service rule, which stipulates that workers in the
public service shall compulsorily retire at 60, or after serving for 35
years (whichever is earlier), also requires that “a director shall
compulsorily retire upon serving eight years on the post.”
The verification team found that Mr. Adamolekun, who became director since 2003, should have left service latest early 2012.
Some ministry officials said the decision to ask Mr. Adamolekun to
proceed on immediate retirement was to avoid a nasty backlash if he were
to remain in office beyond 2013, his 10th year as director.
Mr. Adamolekun, who has since obeyed the directive, would be
remembered for his role in some of the controversial decisions that has
characterised the PPPRA management in recent times.
As General Manager, Operations/Corporate Services, Mr. Adamolekun was
head of an ad-hoc committee that recommended the payment of
controversial allowances approved by the Executive Secretary, Reginald
Stanley, for four of his aides.
The recommendation was contained in an internal memo dated April 5,
2012, with Reference A.3/8/107/C.38/Vol.1/T16, titled, Recommendation
for the Payment of Stipend to Officers Working as STA, TA, Personal
Secretary and Driver to the Executive Secretary.
In the memo, Mr. Adamolekun listed the beneficiaries of the
allowances to include Mohammed Gaji (Senior Technical Assistant);
Husseina Modibbo (Technical Assistant); Bekinwari Young-Harry (Personal
Secretary), and Mohammed Abubakar (Driver).
The four officials were seconded to PPPRA from the Nigerian National
Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, where they worked with Mr. Stanley when he
served first, as Managing Director, Pipelines and Products Marketing
Company, PPMC, and later, Group General Manager, GGM, in charge of New
Business Development Division.
While being on secondment, the Executive Secretary approved the
payment of stipends and other benefits to the four officials from PPPRA
account, while they were also allegedly earning their salaries from the
NNPC.
Public Service Rules on benefits of officers on Transfers and
Secondments states that only the benefitting agency would pay such
benefits to the officials.
Section 5(v) and (vi) of the rule states: “If it is in the public
interest to second an officer to the service of another Government
approved body or recognized International Organisation, the period of
secondment shall not be limited and the officer shall continue to hold
his substantive post and be entitled to increment and promotion and will
be treated as having been posted on special duty. During the period of
such Secondment, the benefitting organization shall be responsible for
the officer’s entitlements.”
However, the memo showed that the Executive Secretary, with the
recommendation of Mr. Adamolekun, approved that Mr. Gaji, who drew about
N10.225 million per annum as salary and other emolutions from the NNPC
(about N852,724.31 per month), be paid additional N526,037.16 every
month as Productivity Allowance by PPPRA.
Similarly, an additional allowance of N357,134.99 was approved for
Mrs. Modibbo monthly as performance Incentive Bonus, despite her
official pay of about N5.691million per annum from the NNPC.
Equally, Miss Young-Harry was collecting about N203,476.21 per month
from PPPRA as End-of -Year -Allowance, in addition to her salary and
allowances of N2.483million per annum (about N206.952.42 monthly) from
the NNPC.
Mr. Abubakar takes about N295,401.79 as Responsibility/Administrative
Allowance from PPPRA every month, in addition to his salary and
allowance from NNPC of about N5.890million per annum (about N490,803.58
monthly).
When PREMIUM TIMES contacted Mr. Adamolekun on the controversial
approvals to the seconded officials, he explained that he could not
respond as he had left the system.
“Please I cannot answer any question, I’m not in the office and I’m
no longer there anyway, so you can get in touch with the office and they
will give you a response,” he said.
A new GM, Operations/Corporate Services is yet to be appointed for the PPPRA.
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