By Johnbosco Agbakwuru

The management of the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria, FMBN, and some aggrieved workers are bickering over in illegal recruitment,  promotion of senior staff without writing the compulsory examination, mandating junior staff to write examination and lobbying to extend his tenure, among others.

FMBN’s Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, MD CEO, Ahmed Dangiwa, while denying allegations, also described the allegation that he gave out loan to Katsina and Kebbi states without repayment and lobbying for the extension of his tenure to acquire more money for his governorship ambition as unfounded.

Some aggrieved workers of the bank had accused the MD of engaging in illegal recruitment, promotion of senior staff without writing the compulsory examination, mandating junior staff to write examination, lobbying to extend his tenure to gather enough resources to contest the governorship election in Katsina state.

He was also accused of giving loans to Kebbi and Katsina states without repayment  and employing new staff without following the due process among others.

They had also requested that the management to give all the junior staff double promotions without examination as he allegedly done for the senior cadre.

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Speaking with Vanguard, the CEO explained that the people that were recently employed in the bank were professionals from the relevant fields and that the examination was conducted by external body that normally handle examination matters for the federal government.

Besides, Dangiwa explained that the management even reduced the cut-off mark of senior staff from 70 per cent to 65 per cent, while the junior staff was brought down from 65 per cent to 60 per cent just to ensure that people who performed well were accommodated.

According to him, when he came on board, he realized that a good number of the workers were contract staff and the graduates among them were paid as low as N40, 000 per month, saying “some of them who are professionals were absolved in areas or departments that required their services.”

The MD said those “who scored the required marks were recruited, while those who were unable to get the required score were told to go. That was the management decision that people participating in the examination should not write their names on the examination papers, rather they were given numbers to avoid any form of manipulations.”

On the issue of promotion, he explained that “there were backlog of promotions before he assumed office and the affected staff were promoted as a way of boosting their morale.

There was no iota of truth I granted non-repayment loan to Kebbi and Katsina State. Kebbi leads other states in the contribution to the National Housing Funds, NHF.”

Some of the staff at the headquarters of the FMBN told Vanguard that the current management under Dangiwa has achieved in less than five years what former management could not achieve from 1992 when the NHF was established to 2017  when he was appointed.

The workers said “the new management has increased NHF scheme collections from N232.8 billion to N506 billion as at October 2021.

There has been about 359 per cent increase in NHF refunds to retired workers. FMBN under the Dangiwa-led management increased total refunds to retired workers from N10. 8 billion in 2017 to N49.7 billion as of October 2021”.

Vanguard News Nigeria