Fact check: Did PenCom suspend resumption of 41 new staff?

During a recent protest, the Nigerian Youth for Change said that the Acting Director General of the National Pension Commission (PenCom), Mrs. Aisha Dahir-Umar, suspended the recruitment of 41 staff concluded by the previous administration of the commission.

The protesters, who stormed the headquarters of PenCom last week on behalf of the new recruits barred from resuming work after receiving employment letters, said the new workers were lawfully employed by PenCom based on the approval of its last Executive Management Committee.

Speaking for the protesters, Comrade Azubike Okafor said that “the Executive Management Committee of PenCom was removed in April 2017 and Mrs. Aisha Dahir-Umar, after receiving the handover note as the most senior staff, indefinitely suspended their already legally concluded employments.”

Speaking to Daily Trust, Dahir-Umar said she was not involved in the recruitment as there was already an order communicated in a letter to the commission for the suspension of the recruitment.

“By the time I resumed office, there was already a letter to say they should not be allowed to resume. That is the problem. It is not PenCom that stopped their resumption,” she said.

She said the suspension may have been initiated by the Federal Character Commission (FCC) since the recruitment flouted federal character principle prescribed by the FCC.

Contacted, the FCC denied suspending the recruitment, adding that the recruitment process “substantially complied with the principle of federal character.”

The spokesperson of FCC, Abdullahi Idris, told our reporter that the FCC has no reason to order the cancellation of a legitimate recruitment process.

“FCC frowns at organisations who after duly being issued with Certificate of Compliance will turn around to cancel same without genuine reason,” he said.

Our reporter three claims:

fact-checked (1) that DahirUmar suspended the recruitment after she assumed office; (2) that the FCC did not suspend the recruitment and (3) that the recruitment substantially complied with the principle of federal character.

On the first claim, investigation showed that on April 19, 2017, the House