Dead civil servant signed employment letters – FCSC

The Senate’s public hearing on recruitment scandals in federal agencies was on Wednesday treated to a drama when employment letters issued to Mrs. Rose Odey and Idachaba Tijani, were found to have been signed by a dead official of the Federal Civil Service Commission.
Odey and Tijani, who testified before the Joint Committee on Federal Character and Labour, explained how they paid N250,000 each to be employed in the federal ministries.

Although the case is before the Police, the applicants said they petitioned the committee in order to expose the syndicates in government ministries and agencies.

The applicants noted that after making the payment, they received letters of employment, posting them to a government agency.

The duo stated that it was after they arrived at the agency that they realised that they were carried fake appointment letters.
Responding to the committee’s request for the confirmation of the letters, the FCSC Chairman, Mrs. Joan Ayo, said the employment letters tendered by Odey and Tijani were mere “photocopies”.

She told the committee that the Ahmed S. Dantanko, who allegedly signed the employment letters in 2012, was dead.

Dantanko, she added, reportedly left the services of the commission in 2008 as a pool officer and not a Director as claimed in the appointment letters.

The committee was however informed that the two members of the job-for-sale syndicate, Juliet Egobunor and Simon Odujebe, named by Odey and Tijani in the racket, were also said to be on the run.

According to Ayo, while Juliet has absconded from duty at the Ministry of Lands and Housing where she is an employee, Odujebe has “jumped bail.”

She said, “There’s no record of the employment of Odey and Tijani anywhere in the FCSC. This has nothing to do with us. If we have apprehended Simon and Juliet, we would have got to the end of this case.

“They are on the run. We have told their ministry that they must produce them. If they can’t, they must produce their next-of-kin because that record must be in their files.”

On Dantanko, Ayo said, “We wanted to bring him before the committee, but he died in an accident last year. He was a civil servant and not a Director. He signed for the then Chairman. He was posted out of the commission as a pool officer.”

Asked by a member of the committee whether it could be proved that Dantanko was dead, she replied, “I asked for the record and that was where we got to know that in addition to leaving the commission, he was also dead”.

Tijani had earlier told the committee that at the ministry he was to work, he had a file opened for him.
However, Ayo faulted the claim, saying, “If the employment was genuine, he would have gone to the Office of the Head of Service; that is where posting is issued. Nobody gets a letter and goes straight to the ministry. As a pool officer, that is not done.”