Integrity Forum to FG: Oronsaye is being persecuted

The Federal Government has been advised to discontinue the ongoing trial of former Head of Service of the Federation (HoS), Mr Steve Oronsaye.
The advice was given at the weekend by the Integrity Forum, a non-governmental organisation.
A statement signed by the group’s National coordinator, James Alo and secretary, Aliu Sanni, said the advice came as a result of its review of circumstances surrounding the entire case against Orosanye which smacks of vendetta and a bid to punish Orosanye for no just cause.
The Group noted that rather than put Orosanye on trial, he should be commended for his service to the country, adding that all the key figures during the public hearing on corruption in the pension office exonerated him.
“The senate committee equally absolved him of any wrong doing”.
The Integrity Forum traced the genesis of Orosanye’s present travail to his time as HoS when he made effort to reform the pension scheme which was then rife with high level corruption and in the process stepped on powerful toes.
The group recalled that on assumption of duty as HoS, Orosanye begun an exercise aimed at saving cost, eradicating and eliminating ghost pensioners. “To this end, he instituted an exercise to carry out physical verification and biometric capture of pensioners across the country”.
According to Integrity Forum, Orosanye’s aim was to also ensure that a seamless e-payment system was put in place, “to ensure that new pensioners who had never received pension were also captured electronically to ensure ease of payment”.
According to the group, Orosanye’s effort deserved commendation considering that during the exercise, mind-boggling frauds spanning several years were unearthed in the pension scheme.
“Many names and account numbers were duplicated, while many fake pensioners provided false documents in order to claim benefits. It was also in the course of this exercise that some officials were discovered to have cloned pensioners files while under-age individuals were also collecting pension benefits in a scheme that had the collusion of a few staff of the pension office. The culprits were handed over to law enforcement agencies. All these were uncovered by the exercise instituted by Oronsaye”, the group said.
The decision of Oronsaye to put an end to the pension scam no doubt put him on collision course with some major members of the pension scam ring, the group said.
“Since he was the one that brought in the EFCC to investigate the pension scam and also gave information that led to the arrest of most of the ring leaders, at what point did the narration change?”
The group equally wondered whether Orosanye is not being ‘punished’ for daring to suggest that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) be merged with some other anti financial crimes agencies when he headed a federal government committee as HoS.