The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has arraigned an Assistant Superintendent of Immigration with the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS), Mr. Abubakar Mohammed Aseku, for allegedly receiving salaries from two additional government agencies even as an employee of the NIS.
The ICPC arraigned him before Justice Binta Dogonyaro of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court, Apo, according to its statement on Wednesday.
The anti-graft agency charged Mr. Aseku on nine counts bordering on abuse of office and corruption.
ICPC Case
According to the ICPC, “the defendant allegedly received N4.2 million in salaries from the Nasarawa State Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology in 2015 while working as a school teacher, despite being on active duty with the NIS.”
He was also alleged to have drawn N13.4 million in salaries from the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) between 2018 and 2019 while employed by the Immigration Service.
Mr. Aseku was further accused of allegedly facilitating the payment of N4.7 million in salaries to seven individuals who were neither employees of the NIS nor on its payroll.
One of the charges reads:
“That you, Abubakar Mohammed Aseku, between October 2018 and October 2019, in Abuja, while serving as an Assistant Superintendent Immigration Officer, used your position to confer corrupt advantage upon yourself by receiving a total sum of N13,400,889.90 in salaries from the Department of Petroleum Resources, while concurrently employed by the Nigerian Immigration Service, thereby committing an offence contrary to and punishable under Section 19 of the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, 2000.”
What transpired in court
- At the court session, Mr. Aseku pleaded not guilty to all charges read to him by the registrar.
- His counsel, Mr. Basil Hemba, told the court that his client had previously been granted bail by another FCT High Court sitting in Maitama, Abuja.
- He relied on the previous bail condition and urged the court to maintain the existing bail terms.
- Justice Dogonyaro upheld the bail conditions, which was earlier granted him by the Maitama court.
- After that, the ICPC’s counsel, Mr. Michael Adesola, asked for an adjournment to allow the prosecution to present its witnesses.
- The presiding judge subsequently adjourned the case until April 29, 2025, for further hearing.
More insights
The development comes days after the ICPC chairman, Dr. Musa Aliyu, had disclosed that the agency identified and arrested individuals responsible for manipulating the payroll system, including one case where a government worker added his family members to the system.
“We have been able to track and recover this amount of money, and we also identified people that are inserting ghost workers in the system. We even discovered that somebody had put his wife, his son, and his in-laws on the payroll,” he said.
According to him, the agency recovered over N20 billion in pension deductions from salaries allocated to ghost workers in 2024.
