Allegations of unbridled corrupt practices rattle the Federal Character Commission (FCC), as its Chairman, Muheeba Dankaka, is accused of job racketeering by other Commissioners of the Commission
By Udoka Ekeleme, Abuja
If the allegations leveled against Muheeba Dankaka, the Executive Chairman of the Federal Character Commission (FCC) is at any time proved to be factual, the “10 percent empress” of the FCC is already on her way to jail.
The states Commissioners had accused the FCC Executive Chairman of being in the habit of summoning Heads of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of the Federal Government that have employment opportunities to her office whereupon she would use intimidation to compel them to reserve 10 percent of the vacancies for her to sell to job seekers, or in the alternative she would personally visit the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) to muzzle her 10 percent from them.
She has also been accused of giving juicy jobs to her children and other family members and cronies who did not qualify for such jobs. The rest of her 10 percent she would sell to desperate applicants at exorbitant price. She was further accused of allocating job vacancies to the children and wards of the high and mighty in the society in order not to run into troubled waters.
But as Dankaka began to swim deep in the euphoria of her alleged graft, she became oblivious of when her cup was getting full. Suddenly, her luck ran out of capacity to continue making fraudulent millions of naira from the misery of unsuspecting Nigerian job seekers. She was caught red handed. Now she is battling with shame and public odium. She has become another metaphor for women not fit to occupy public office in Nigeria. Dankaka’s downfall began on Tuesday, July 25, 2023.
The event was at the Green Chamber of the National Assembly, the lower legislative chamber otherwise known as the House of Representatives. The House was investigating personnel recruitment at the MDAs, employment racketeering by the FCC and what it called gross mismanagement of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).
Dankaka who had been invited to the House to defend some of the allegations against the FCC, had feigned illness as the reason she was unable to honour the invitation. In her place, she had sent a team of FCC Commissioners representing various states of the federation to lie to the House Committee that she was sick and hence unable to attend the House Ad-hoc Committee’s investigative session. The team of FCC Commissioners which was led to the hearing by Mr Armaya’u Abubakar, the Taraba State Commissioner, tendered an excuse for the Executive Chairman Dankaka to the effect that she had an appointment with her personal physician.
But Moses Anaughe, the Commissioner who represents Delta State at the FCC, was to puncture Dankaka’s bag of lies when he raised his hand to be identified because he came into the session when it had already commenced. The late coming of Anaughe to the probe panel was all it would take for Dankaka’s alleged nefarious activities at the FCC to come to an abrupt end.
Anaughe did not only introduce himself to the probe panel, he went further to accuse the team that represented Dankaka of blatant lies. To the consternation of the Committee members, the Delta State FCC Commissioner told the rest members of the team, “You people are lying”. The FCC team went dumbfounded. However, the leader of the team and one of the Commissioners who came with him had to summon the courage to add that they did not say the Executive Chairman was in the hospital but that she had a date with her doctor because she was ill.
Anaughe also accused Dankaka of always giving excuses whenever she was called for probing, adding that, “If she wants to collect 10 percent of employment from MDAs, the Chief Executive will go, so why is she not here?”
Honourable Yusuf Gagdi, Chairman of the Probe Committee insisted that Dankaka must appear before the Committee the following day, Wednesday July 16. He also put the FCC team on oath before proceeding continued but labelled Abubakar leader of the team a liar when the latter pleaded for a lengthy time so that Dankaka would appear in person. But Gagdi maintained his ground for the next day appearance of Dankaka.
Though Dankaka had pleaded not guilty of the accusations insisting it was because she failed to do the biddings of her accusers, the Delta State Commissioner of FCC, while accusing her of signing appointment letters for 24 ghost workers, said “If there is any request for recruitment, the Chairman of Federal Character, Dr Dankaka will request the Chief Executives to come to her office and discuss 10 per cent. She does collect 10 per cent from all MDAs of all the employment she is signing. All those 10 per cent she collects, those are the slots that she employs agents that are selling.
“I have two employment letters here of her children in juicy agencies where the annual salary is N1 million, the other one is N8.2 million. I have the appointment letters here. And I just also want to inform this committee, if she finds any agency doing employment that is paying more than these MDAS, she will move them to that MDA. She moves them from MDA to MDA.”
He further alleged that there were, “letters of appointments she signed for 24 ghost workers. I call them ghost workers because they are receiving salary after paying for the job and when they get the appointment letter, they also refuse to resume work.
“I have the account numbers. If this Committee requests for the account statements of all these transactions of jobs selling of the agents of the Chairman, it will receive all of them.
“She has a lot of agents selling slots for her. After selling they have a central pool where they remit all the monies to, whereby they will withdraw and collect dollars and give to her. I have all the account details here. In my submission, we have a lot of things to reveal.”
In the same vein, the Commissioner representing Nasarawa State, Mr Mamman Alakaye, in his own submission said, “I align myself totally with all the documents submitted in respect of the issue at stake. I want to however add more that we couldn’t have gotten to this point if the Chairman was a listening Chairman. We have taken far reaching steps to internally resolve these issues; to draw her attention to follow procedures and rules, but she wouldn’t listen.
“She rather wants to operate as a sole administrator. She has always said nobody will touch her. This she said verbally.
“Mr Chairman, I want to tender a document to support what my colleagues have said so far. For example, her son was employed in NCC (National Communications Commission), which I am aware of just last week she transferred him from the NCC to Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission. He did his documentation with IPPIS just this week. I have the document to tender.”
Efforts made to contact the FCC Executive Chairman could not yield result as at the time of filing this report. But a source close to her insisted that the woman must be given adequate opportunity to defend herself because the allegations leveled against her are weighty such that she is in the best position to respond to them.
