PTAD and Nellie Mayshak saga By Hassan Usman

Until a few days ago, the name ‘Nellie Mayshak’ would mean absolutely nothing to the average Nigerian, barring the senior citizens whose pensions are managed by the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) which she headed. The Nigerian-Canadian civil servant was just like any other Nigerian in government employ – doing what she was employed to do.

Nellie Masyshak

The events of the past few days have changed that. Now ‘Nellie Mayshak’ is the greedy civil servant who allocated 60 million naira to herself, as monthly salary, and oversaw fraud running into billions of naira at PTAD. If you believe blogs and hatchet-job journalists, you would be convinced that Mayshak has a warehouse of naira that she looted from the pension funds she was appointed to administer.

It began with a spurious article on The Cable online platform. Then the highly read Pius Adesanmi, a Professor at Carleton University Ottawa, Canada, jumped into the fray. He wrote about Mayshak in a Facebook article that will go down as one of the most frivolous and libelous creation of a person of his standing – a Professor. He recklessly wrote:

“Until her monumental stealing as a civil servant was exposed, Nellie, like Dino, FFK, and politicians of all parties, was obviously living above her means among you. You saw her cars and mansions.”

With ‘respected’ figures like Adesanmi writing so confidently, albeit maliciously, and platforms like Leadership, following suit with even more unconfirmed information, everything seemed true to the average Nigerian, especially after the official confirmation of Mayshak’s suspension last week. In a statement issued at the close of the week, long after Adesanmi’s article, the Special Adviser, Media, to the Minister of Finance, Mr. Festus Akanbi, wrote in a statement that the Minister, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun placed Mayshak on suspension to allow investigations into alleged mismanagement of funds.

“The suspension which is a normal civil service procedure is to pave way for an unimpeded investigation into the activities of the directorate under the watch of Mayshak.

“While the ministry assures pensioners that the suspension will not affect pension payment and services, it promises to make public the findings of the investigative panel on the issues leading to the suspension,” the statement read.

But it is easy to call a dog a bad name and hang in. It is even easier in Nigeria, where an innocent student can be called a thief by some mischievous fellow on the streets and lynched by a mob – no questions asked. In the usual guilty-without-trial spirit, many writers went on to conclude that the embattled DG had perpetuated fraud running into billions. There was no official source, no fact. But the mob had already gathered and wanted blood.

What many Nigerians do not know is that Mayshak an international development expert with over 25-years’ experience in public sector management, both in Canada and internationally, without any negative incidence marring her records. Just before becoming the pioneer Director General of PTAD, she was the National Programme Manager for the Federal Public Administration Reform Programme, a UK Government/Federal Government of Nigeria collaboration to reform the Public Service of Nigeria towards improving systems and processes for policy, budget and civil service management.

Mayshak, an expert in institutional strengthening of government structures and processes and building capacity for effective public policy management, reform management and coordination has been involved in international development projects in Eastern Europe, China and many African countries, including Angola, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, South Africa and Sudan. She led the reconstruction of the Civil Service of post-war Liberia, working with senior government officials to develop the first ever Civil Service Reform Strategy that is being implemented in the Country. In Liberia, she worked with the first elected female President in Africa, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. In neighboring Ghana, Mayshak led a long running institutional development project in the office of the President Ghana to improve the operational processes for Cabinet decision-making and the policy management capacity of senior officials. She advised the Kenya Prime Minister’s Office, the Uganda Cabinet Office and played a part in reforming the public administration of Lithuania into the European Union. While working in the Ontario (Canada) Public Service, she held high profile positions Senior Policy Advisor to the Cabinet Office, Policy Advisory to the Solicitor General and Minister of Correctional Services, Director of Research for a Justice Commission, among others. She was also the Deputy Director for International Programs at the Institute of Public Administration of Canada (IPAC) for a number of years.

It is important to note that, in all her years of working in these countries, Mayshak’s record was straight. Those who appointed her to oversee PTAD must have taken all these into account before taking the decision. Her coming was preceded by massive fraud in pension administration – funds were looted, pensioners left unpaid and records were not kept. All these changed with Mayshak’s coming.

Mayshak began a reform built on information technology that she said, in interviews before her suspension, was targeted at cleaning up the pension system. She had severally noted that the pension database was fraught with ghost pensioners. Her mission was to bring sanity and her weapon was verification of pensioners.

The verification exercise exposed as many as 15,000 ghost pensioners in the Police Pension Department (PPD) alone. This was widely reported and verified. Now, if we assume that each of these ghost pensioners earned only 20,000 naira pension monthly, it means she saved the government N300,000,000 monthly or N3.6 billion a year!!! In the Customs, Immigration and Prisons Pension Department (CIPPD) it was reported that N7 billion was saved and 3000 ghost pensioners were exposed. Do the maths again. A repeat of the discovery of massive fraud was set to happen in the database of the Civil Service Pension Department (CSPD) which is being verified at the moment.

If whispers in pension circles are anything to go by, the reason for Mayshak’s travails can be trailed to her success with the job she was given to do, not her failure or greed. Investigations show that the embattled DG’s anti-corruption stand had hurt the pension cabal. A source in the Ministry of Finance noted that the case against her reign at PTAD had been there before the coming of the new Minister.

Nigerians must wake up and think. The fake pensioners so far removed from the payroll were put in place by certain persons. Will these persons sit back and allow their source of illegal wealth to be blocked? We are talking about billions being looted regularly.

It is a clear case. Mayshak is only the latest victim of Nigeria’s love for filicide. Here, we kill our children, celebrate their death and then we lament about the unfortunate turn of events. Nigerians must wake up to the reality that corruption fights back, fiercely.

One thing that has not been faulted yet is how pension management fared under Mayshak’s able hands. Throughout her tenure, individual pensioners and pension bodies attested to her impact. She won awards and was severally commended by union leaders, especially for the stabilization of pension payments and innovations aimed at pensioners’ welfare.

No doubt, Mayshak travails are the reward for her belief in a Nigeria that works. Nigeria has killed another child.

***Usman wrote from Fagge, Kano state