President Muhammadu Buhari has sacked a
Permanent Secretary, who has been using his
office to defraud the Federal Government by
awarding contracts worth billions of Naira to
himself through the award of phantom
contracts.The yet to be identified secretary, who
was appointed by Buhari in 2015, was dismissed
on Tuesday, on the orders of the President.
He was driven out of the Federal Secretariat in
Abuja by two police officers following his
dismissal.
A Presidency source confirmed that the President
ordered the immediate removal of the top civil
servant, who presided over the affairs of one of
the strategic ministries handling intervention
programmes in the country following evidence
that he awarded contracts to companies
belonging to him.
It was learned that the illicit activities of
permanent secretary were exposed by key
officials of the ministry to security agencies for
investigations.
One of the security agency officials, who spoke
to Vanguard confirmed the Permanent secretary
dismissal saying:
“We have been monitoring the man and
the various companies being used by him
to siphon huge sums of money from the
ministry, which handles intervention
programmes in the Niger Delta region but
he has been very smart and suspicious of
our movement, thereby making it
impossible for us to arrest him despite
the ambush we laid for him and his
cronies.
He said:
'But Mr. President did not waste time in
asking the Head of Service of the
Federation to sack the man with
immediate effect as soon as he got to
know that the man had used over 500
companies to award fake contracts to
himself and move huge sums of money
from the ministry in question.”
'In fact, the discovery of the large-scale
fraud in the ministry, which has suffered a
lot of project failure and the subsequent
sacking of the permanent secretary by
Mr. President, followed a painstaking
investigation by the anti-corruption
agencies, which will soon charge the man
to court,' the source added.