THE Chairman of House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee investigating the activities of the nation’s Pension Administrators, Hon Johnson Agbonayinma on Wednesday threatened to issue a bench warrant on the Administrators should they failed to appear before the Committee today.
Addressing newsmen in Abuja yesterday on the refusal of the Administrators to cooperate with the Committee in carrying its assignment as mandated by the House, Hon Agbonayinma lamented that the Administrators and other stakeholders were deliberately avoiding to appear at the Public hearing which was meant to elicit the needed information for the investigation.
It would be recalled that the House of Representative in February 2019 mandated the committee to commence investigations into the activities of the National Pension Commission since April 2017 over an allegation of violation of the Act establishing the commission and the N9trn pension fund.
According to him, “We would have no option than to apply the law. That is we would have to seek approval to issue bench warrant of arrest against them so that they can be compelled to appear before this ad-hoc committee.
“To the Administrators that refused to appear before this ad-hoc committee on Thursday as expected, we would do just that; anyone, not just PFAs that are invited; banks, PenCom.”
ALSO READ: Provide Security for Maina to tell Nigerians the truth —CSOs
The Administrators had in a letter signed by the Executive Secretary, Pension Fund Operators Association of Nigeria, Susan Oranye and addressed to the committee said that they would not be attending the public hearing due to other engagements.
The letter reads, “On behalf of the invited Pension Administrators, we regretfully which to inform you that they would be unable to attend the scheduled meeting as requested due to prior industry engagements slated for the same day.”
But dissatisfied with the action of Operations, the committee chairman said: “We have been having different issues of people trying to avoid coming to the public hearing. We had our first public hearing – in order for us to continue with our investigations that were slated for Thursday, I believe some people are trying to derail of the wheel of the progress of our ad-hoc committee.
“We invited different PFAs, we invited the PenCom, the Acting DG, the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), Trade Union Congress (TUC) and many civil societies who submitted document related to the subject matter and we never invited Pension Fund Operators Association of Nigeria (PenOp), the call themselves, but we are surprised to be receiving letters; the first one we received before out public hearing telling us that the PFAs will not be able to attend under the umbrella of Pension Fund Operators Association of Nigeria.
“There was no time this ad-hoc committee wrote a letter to PenOp. They have been representing the various PFAs we have invited, the administrators, some of the banks and the custodians of the funds.
“To our greatest surprise and dismay, we also received another letter today (Wednesday, April 3, 2019) writing to us that the Pension operators will not be able to attend the investigative hearing slated for tomorrow.”
While stating that no one has been indicted, the Chairman of the Committee pointed out that Public hearing would rather serve as an opportunity for the stakeholders to clear the air on issues raised and assure Nigerians that nothing is amiss and was not a court of law to sanction or indict anybody.