Abia State Governor has ordered the prosecution of some civil servants recently arrested for their alleged involvement in the pension fund fraud in the State.
Otti made this known, Thursday, during his monthly media chat tagged: “Governor Alex Otti Speaks to Abians”. This is why he said that his administration will sustain the efforts to sanitize the civil service and stressed that tolerance for corruption is zero.
According to him, the government made the arrest immediately after it got convincing information about the pension fraud syndicate.
“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, there are about ten or eleven of them. Some of them are outside the country. We are going to repatriate them to the State to come and answer the allegations.
“We can’t tolerate that kind of corruption. No matter who is involved. People, who are defending thieves should be perceived and treated like thieves. So, we are issuing a warning. There is a limit to opposition”, Otti stated.
The Governor revealed that he has directed the Accountant-General of the State and the Commissioner for Finance to look at the errors noticed in the payment of the new minimum wage and correct them accordingly.
“We received a few reports that there were some errors, some computation issues and I have directed the Accountant-General and the Commissioner for Finance to sit down and look at it and correct those errors, so that we don’t have complaints coming from there”, he stated.
He further informed that he has been able to defray almost ₦90 billion out of about ₦191 billion he inherited from May 29, 2023, when he came into office.
Otti maintained that his administration has yet to borrow a Kobo, even as it has continued to fix roads, provide quality healthcare, renovate and upgrade schools, and tackle security among others.
He called for more support to enable him to succeed.
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