THE Nigerian civil servants, under the auspices of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN), have petitioned the Acting President, Goodluck Jonathan, on the N10 billion released by the Federal Government, to the federal civil servants to enable them build or buy their own landed property, and demanded urgent investigation of the deal, because the money had developed wings and could not be traced.
“It is our fervent desire that this N10 billion will not be allowed to enter into ‘voice mail’ where it will not be retrieved, like other several billions of naira that have not been accounted for by some public institutions and prominent politicians,” the ASCSN said in the petition, dated 18th February, 2010, to the acting president.
The Federal Government released N10 billion to the federal civil servants to enable them build or buy their own landed property, as reflected in the Recurrent Expenditure Supplementary General Warrant 2009 derived from Supplementary Appropriation Act (11) 2009.

In a circular No.8/vii/305 of 26th March 2009, issued through the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, the Federal Government released the N10 billion to enable federal civil servants acquire their own landed property as a palliative measure to cushion the adverse effects of the global economic recession.

But almost a year after the release of the fund, which should have gone to the Federal Government Staff Housing Loans Board for disbursement to the civil servants as revolving loans, the money was said to have been allegedly diverted by some high ranking officials in government and the money has not been made available for the reason it was released..

The ASCSN said in its petition to the vice president that they were reliably informed that the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria FMBN has in turn kept the money with a new generation bank, while its proceeds for 11 months cannot be accounted for at present.

The workers warned that if the N10 billion is not carefully handled, “it has the potential of engineering the civil servants into action as a result of the bottled up anger against the FMBN and the National Housing Fund.

“So the Association of the Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN) is saying, repatriate this money and put it in the right place in 21 days, otherwise there will be serious problem because National Housing Fund is a fraud and it is not beneficial to anybody.”

In paragraph 14 of the seven page petition, the ASCSN demanded that the N10 billion intervention fund for the federal civil servants should be given to the Federal Government Staff Housing Loans Board to manage on behalf of civil servants.

Alternatively, the association said the N10 billion should be deposited in a dedicated account at the Central Bank of Nigeria to be administered by the bank selected by the board.

“On no account should the FMBN be allowed to oversee the disbursement of the N10 billion because it has proved patently incapable of managing such a scheme, more so because millions of federal civil servants throughout the country have no faith whatsoever in that bank,” the workers warned.

The petition also read: “It is our fervent desire that this N10 billion will not be allowed to enter into ‘voice mail’ where it will not be retrieved like other several billions of naira that have not been accounted for by some public institutions and prominent politicians.”

But in a response to the allegation by the association, the FMBN said the release of the money, which was approved in the 2009 Supplementary Appropriation Act, was only disbursed to FMBN on December 31, 2009, adding that the money was meant for all civil servants across the federation and not the federal civil servants alone.

The bank, in a release titled: “Issues relating to the N10 billion, housing stimulus fund also said that the Central Bank of Nigeria, at the time of disbursing the fund in December, requested the FMBN to furnish it with an account into which the funds were to be disbused.

It stated that the account into which the money was deposited is one of the operational accounts maintained by the bank in the normal course of business.

However, the bank refused to name the bank where the money was deposited, despite journalists’ insistence to know the operational bank in which the money was kept.

It stated, however, that to ensure the judicious disbursement of the money, it has held several meetings with representatives of the Budget Office of the Federation, representatives of the Federal Civil Servants Housing Loans Board and the representatives of the organised Labour.