By Ismail Auwal
A Kano Municipal Local Government employee, Khalifa Mukthar, has cried out about stoppage of his salary for refusing to continue sharing it with Arifi Abbas, a brother of the Chairman of Kano State All Progressive Congress (APC) party, Alhaji Abdullahi Abbas.
Mukthar narrated his ordeal to Sahelian Times about how the duo of Amina Abbas, who serves as the current Director of Personnel Management (DPM) in Nassarawa Local Government, and Arifi Abbas, a R.O in Fagge Local Government; both of them siblings of Alhaji Abdullahi Abbas, have connived to divert his hard earned salary.
“Arif Abbas gave me an employment offer in the year 2011. Afterwards, he compelled me to be sharing the salary with him,” said Mukhtar.
“I spent 9 years paying him 9,000 naira every month out of my salary, and additional four years paying him 7,000 monthly- which summed up to 11 years,” he added.
However, after getting exhausted of sharing his monthly salary with Abbas, which he claimed to have shared a total of over one million in 11 years, he became reluctant to continue with the arrangement.
“Because I finally decided to stop paying him monthly ransom, he connived with his powerful sister, Hajiya Umma Abbas, to deduct my salary from source.”
“When I received my September salary, I found out that 35,000 was missing. Upon inquiry, I was told that I had collected a loan of over 300,000. And that deduction, I was told, was a directive from Umma Abbas,” he said.
He, however, said that has already lodged a complaint with the Kano state anti-graft agency, alleging that instead of getting justice, the powerful duo of Arifi and Amina have connived again to influence his employer, Kano Municipal Local Government, to completely stop his salary.
When contacted, Umma Abbas told Sahelian Times that, she could not comment on the issue, since a committee had been set up by the Ministry of Local Government to investigate the matter.
All efforts to speak with Arifi Abbas and DPM of Kano Municipal Local Government have proved abortive. They didn’t respond to the calls at the time of writing this report.
