By Onyewuchi Ojinnaka
An employee of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, (NNPC)/Nigerian Pipeline and Storage Company Ltd (NPSC) and Chairman, PENGASSAN PPMC Kaduna Depot Branch, Nuhu Aliyu who defrauded the NNPC to the tune of N1,834,900.00 in October 2017 has bagged 10 years imprisonment.
A Chairman of PENGASSAN PPMC, Kaduna Depot branch, Nuhu Aliyu was prosecuted by the Kaduna Zonal Office of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, (EFCC), on amended one-count charge of criminal breach of trust and abuse of office to which he pleaded guilty before Justice Darius Khobo of the Kaduna State High Court sitting in Kaduna, Nigeria.
After his plea of guilty, the prosecution counsel Y.J.Matiyak while reviewing the facts of the case, tendered 11 documents which were admitted as exhibits. Consequently, he urged the court to convict and sentence the defendant accordingly.
After going through the evidence before the court, documents tendered and the guilty plea of the defendant, the judge convicted and sentenced him to 10 years imprisonment or a fine option of the sum of N100,000.
Justice Khobo further ordered the EFCC to recover the proceeds of the crime from the convict and transfer it in favour of the PPMC.
The convict perfected the fraud by calling an emergency meeting of a few NUPENG executives, and deliberately left out some others with the sole aim of having the liberty to process some payments to himself. However, the meeting did not hold, but he went ahead to facilitate the payments to himself by splitting the payments into two; one to himself to the tune of N934,900 and the other to Muktar Aliyu, NUPENG’s secretary in the state, to the tune of N900,000.00
Muktar Aliyu, however, returned the sum to Nuhu Aliyu, thereby making the chairman the sole beneficiary of an illicit payment of N1,834,900.00
It was further discovered that to facilitate the payments, the convict forged the signatures of some other NUPENG officials with the help of one Ibrahim Yakubu Shekarau.