ICPC urged to probe Director under Fashola over forgery

Trouble is currently brewing in the newly-created Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing following a petition to the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission accusing the Director of Architectural Services Department, Architect Sani Gidado, of fraudulent elongation of his service.
This is the second of such petition against Gidado, but the first to be sent to the ICPC.
The Ministry is headed by a former Governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN).
Gidado, who allegedly entered the Federal Civil Service on July 30, 1979, has altered his date of entry to read July 12, 1982, a move allegedly carried out with the collusion of officers of that Ministry.
The development gives Gidado undue advantage over his junior colleagues and it is currently generating furore as the labour union in the Ministry.
Gidado, it was learnt, had tried in vain after the first petition to make the Ministry’s management see reason with him.
According to a petition dated May 27, 2015, sent to the ICPC, titled: “Serious Misconduct/Falsification and Suppression of Official Record,” signed by one Nuhu Adamu, copies of which were sent to the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Head of Service and the Chairman Civil Service Commission, the Commission was urged to address the issue to serve as deterrent to others.
The petition was originally submitted by Adams but later modified by the Abuja Chapter of the National Anti-Corruption Volunteer Corps, a national vanguard against the continued toleration and impunity of corruption in Nigeria, with their clarification letter to the ICPC dated November 12, 2015.
Attached as Appendix II to the petition is the authenticated Nominal Roll of the defunct Federal Ministry of Works, Housing and Urban Development, subsisting in 2009.
The document was taken from the records of the present Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing, the custodians of this old Nominal Roll after the de-merger of both Ministries.
Architect Gidado’s date of first appointment, according to the petition, indicates that his date of entry into service was July 30, 1979, and urged ICPC to independently request for and obtain relevant document older than 2009, which so far Gidado has been unable to eliminate.
Also attached as Appendix III is a memo from Gidado himself to the Permanent Secretary of the same Federal Ministry of Works, Housing and Urban Development when he left the Presidential Committee on Barracks Rehabilitation in 2009.
Here, he confirmed his date of first appointment as 1979 on page 60, the petition said.
The petition added: “But today, no one can find any single record of the numerous known documents hand-filled by Gidado before 2009 (Emolument Forms, Aper Forms, Promotion Forms A, B, & C; HOS Manpower Development Forms; etc, ), which everyone completes severally every year. While you will readily find anybody else’s, Arc Gidado, with the aid of his collaborators, has methodically removed all of his. Neither will you find any record of his gazetted first Appointment or Confirmation, as these will place his date of first appointment at July 30, 1979.”
The petition stated that the seniority of Gidado (using 1979 as first day of appointment), was expressed in a letter by the then Permanent Secretary, Mr. Ingawa, stating Gidado’s seniority over Architect (Mrs.) M.D. Alamutu, who joined in 1980 and retired in 2013.
It said Alamutu and the retired Director, Architect Umaru Aliyu, the current President of the Architects Registration Council of Nigeria, who resides in Abuja, could be contacted because the latter handed over the department to Gidado on the basis of seniority and the date of his first appointment of July 30, 1979.
Seniority in the federal civil service is based on two criteria: date of promotion and date of entry into the service.
If two contenders have the same date of promotion, their dates of entry will determine seniority.
The petitioner wondered where two officers, as is the case of Alamutu and Gidado, were promoted on the same date, seniority is determined on the basis of first entry into the ministry.
With an entry date of 1980, Alamutu should be two years the senior of Gidado if his new date of 1982 was to subsist.
The petitioner wondered then on what grounds Aliyu handed over to Gidado if not his date of entry into government service (1979? 1982?).
This is the question the petitioner wants ICPC to obtain answers to.
The petitioner stated that he was driven by the need to set good example for junior staff about honesty, integrity and diligence in service in response to an earlier call by the ICPC Chairman, Ekpo Nta, to report cases of this nature such that disciplinary action would be taken against Gidado and people like him who falsify their records in order to defraud government with illegal elongations of service.
The National Anti-Corruption Volunteer Corps called on the ICPC to restore the hope of every civil servant in this Ministry who know about “this blatantly suppressed fraud, by investigating and bringing the perpetrators of this corruption to justice”.