
President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered the sack of a Permanent Secretary, who has been allegedly using his office to defraud the Federal Government through the award of phantom contracts worth billions of Naira to himself. The permanent secretary, was appointed by Buhari in 2015, was fired, Tuesday, on the orders of the President.
A source in the ministry confirmed that two police officers drove the sacked permanent secretary from the Federal Secretariat, Abuja, raising concerns as to what might have led to such an action.
A Presidency source confirmed to Vanguard 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.
We learned that the sacked permanent secretary had deployed several strategies to evade a sting operation, which had been planned by one of the anti-graft agencies, thereby making it impossible for the operatives to track him down.
It was learned that key officials of the ministry, who got wind of the illicit activities of the permanent secretary, drew the attention of security agencies to the development and called for urgent investigation of the man.
One of the security agency officials, who handled the investigation of the sacked permanent secretary, told our correspondent that the sting operation planned against the official was frustrated by him and his agents, forcing them to delay his arrest since January this year.
He said:
“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 painstaking investigation by the anti-corruption agencies, which will soon charge the man to court,”
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