Abdulrasheed Maina, former Chairman of the defunct Pension Reform Task Team (PRTT), has regained his freedom after serving an eight-year jail term at the Kuje Correctional Centre in Abuja.
Abdulrasheed Maina
Sources close to the matter disclosed to our correspondent that Maina, convicted in 2021 by a Federal High Court in Abuja on 12 counts of money laundering involving over N2 billion in pension funds, has been out of prison for several weeks, though the exact date of his release remains unconfirmed.
Trial Judge Okon Abang had ruled that Maina misappropriated pensioners’ money—many of whom died without benefits—by concealing his identity as a signatory to accounts opened in family members’ names without their consent, sentencing him to 61 years concurrently from his October 2019 arraignment date.
Dissatisfied with the verdict, Maina appealed to the Court of Appeal, which in May 2023 upheld both the conviction and reduced the effective sentence to eight years.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had arraigned him in October 2019 on charges he initially denied.
His release caps a protracted legal battle that spotlighted systemic vulnerabilities in pension administration, drawing widespread public scrutiny.
