For several years, Abdulrasheed Abdullahi Maina was a name Nigerian authorities wanted to locate.
Then, in September 2017, something extraordinary happened.
The former senior civil servant was officially approved for reinstatement into the federal civil service, with the approval backdated to the day he had been dismissed in 2013. He was also approved to sit for a promotion examination for the position of Director, Administration, Grade Level 17.
By the end of that month, Maina was working at the Ministry of Interior.
The man who had been declared wanted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission was back inside government.
And he was not returning to exactly where he had left.
The episode would become one of the most extraordinary civil service controversies of the Buhari era, raising questions about court orders, administrative authority, the Federal Civil Service Commission and the chain of decisions that allowed Maina to return.
The Civil Servant Behind the Pension Reform
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Maina had first become prominent because of pensions.
He was chairman of the Presidential Task Team on Pension Reforms, a government body involved in efforts to address longstanding problems in Nigeria’s pension system.
The issue affected thousands of retired public servants. Pension delays, verification exercises and allegations of corruption had made pension administration a persistent national problem.
Maina became one of the officials publicly associated with the government’s efforts to reform the system.
But the same work eventually placed him at the centre of allegations of financial misconduct.
The allegations concerned billions of naira and became the subject of investigations and court proceedings.
By 2013, Maina’s position in the civil service had collapsed.
The Dismissal and the Disappearance
Maina was dismissed from the federal civil service with effect from February 21, 2013.
His troubles did not end with the dismissal.
In 2015, the EFCC charged him before the Federal High Court in Abuja alongside former Head of the Civil Service Steve Oronsaye and others. The 24 count charge included allegations relating to procurement fraud and obtaining money under false pretences. Maina was not present when the other defendants appeared in court.
The EFCC subsequently declared him wanted.
In February 2016, The Punch reported that INTERPOL had issued a worldwide alert following a request from Nigerian authorities. The report said the EFCC had requested assistance through the Nigerian police’s INTERPOL bureau.
For a senior Nigerian civil servant, the progression was remarkable.
He had gone from leading a government pension reform body to being dismissed, prosecuted and sought internationally.
Then he disappeared from public view.
Then Maina Came Back
In September 2017, Maina was approved for reinstatement.
The paperwork later obtained and published by The Punch revealed that the Federal Civil Service Commission had approved his return with effect from February 21, 2013, the same date on which his dismissal had taken effect.
The commission also approved him to sit for the next promotion examination for Director, Administration, Grade Level 17.
The documents provided a paper trail.
An April 27, 2017 letter from Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice Abubakar Malami had asked the Federal Civil Service Commission to give consequential effect to a court judgment concerning a warrant issued for Maina’s arrest.
The Federal Civil Service Commission considered the matter at a meeting on June 14.
It subsequently asked the Office of the Head of the Civil Service to obtain an appropriate recommendation from the Ministry of Interior.
The commission considered the recommendation in August and approved Maina’s reinstatement.
By September, the decision had been communicated.
Maina was back.
The Court Order Behind the Decision
This was where the legal argument became complicated.
The court judgment cited in the administrative correspondence concerned a warrant of arrest involving Maina.
The Attorney General’s office interpreted the judgment as having consequences for the administrative action that had led to Maina’s dismissal. The Federal Civil Service Commission then considered the matter within the civil service framework.
But the court decision did not amount to a blanket declaration that every allegation against Maina had been disproved.
His criminal case was a separate matter.
That distinction became particularly important because Maina’s reinstatement occurred while the controversy surrounding the criminal allegations had not disappeared.
The Ministry Where He Reappeared
Maina’s return became public in October 2017 when it emerged that he had resumed at the Ministry of Interior.
Reports at the time described him as Acting Director of Human Resources.
The ministry confirmed his presence and pointed to the civil service authorities as responsible for decisions concerning appointments, re engagement, postings and promotions.
The situation was already unusual.
Then it became a national political crisis.
The question was no longer simply how Maina had returned.
It was who had made the return possible.
The Government’s Institutions Disagreed
The answer was not immediately clear because different government institutions gave different accounts.
The Federal Civil Service Commission had documentary evidence showing that it had approved Maina’s reinstatement.
The Office of the Head of the Civil Service became central to the dispute over whether the reinstatement had been properly communicated and implemented.
A later account reported that Maina had not formally received the reinstatement letter before officials at the Ministry of Interior allowed him to resume work.
This distinction became important.
There was a difference between an approval being issued and every administrative step required to implement that approval being completed.
Yet Maina was physically back inside the ministry.
That fact was difficult for the public to ignore.
Buhari Orders Him Out
On October 23, 2017, President Muhammadu Buhari ordered Maina’s immediate disengagement from the federal civil service.
The presidency also demanded a report explaining the circumstances surrounding his recall and posting to the Ministry of Interior.
The timing was striking.
Only weeks earlier, Maina’s reinstatement had moved through the civil service system.
Now the presidency was ordering his removal.
The government had to explain how a former official who had been dismissed and declared wanted had managed to return to a senior position.
The controversy subsequently became the subject of further investigations and competing accounts from officials.
Was Maina Actually Reinstated?
This question became one of the strangest parts of the entire affair.
In November 2017, then Head of the Civil Service of the Federation Winifred Oyo Ita told a House of Representatives committee that Maina had not been properly reinstated because the necessary procedure had not been completed.
That position did not erase the earlier documentation.
The Federal Civil Service Commission had issued a September 18 letter approving his reinstatement and promotion examination. Another account reported that the Ministry of Interior had recommended his reinstatement and that the FCSC subsequently approved it.
The controversy therefore became partly a question of terminology and procedure.
Was approval the same thing as completed reinstatement?
Had the letter been properly delivered?
Who authorised Maina to resume?
And who was responsible for the consequences?
Those questions kept the controversy alive long after Maina had left the ministry.
The Pensioners Behind the Controversy
It is easy to remember the Maina affair as a story about government officials and bureaucratic paperwork.
But the original subject was pensioners.
Nigeria’s pension system had become a source of frustration for retired workers who often had to wait for their entitlements after decades of public service.
The pension reform programme was therefore not simply another government administrative exercise.
For a pensioner waiting for money needed for food, rent or medical care, delays in pension administration had immediate consequences.
That was the environment in which Maina first became prominent.
It was also why allegations concerning pension funds attracted such intense public attention.
The Story Did Not End With His Removal
Maina’s brief return to government was only one chapter in a much longer legal saga.
He later faced trial in a money laundering case brought by the EFCC.
On November 8, 2021, the Federal High Court in Abuja convicted him and sentenced him to eight years in prison in a case involving about ₦2.1 billion.
In May 2023, the Court of Appeal upheld the conviction and the eight year sentence. The appellate court rejected his arguments that he had been denied a fair hearing and held that the prosecution had proved its case beyond reasonable doubt.
The later conviction is important when looking back at the events of 2017.
At the time of his return to government, the allegations against him were still matters before the courts. The subsequent conviction came years later.
The two stages should therefore not be collapsed into one.
The Strange Meaning of “Promotion”
The phrase “returned with a promotion” became attached to the story because of the September 2017 FCSC correspondence.
The document did not simply restore Maina to his former position.
It stated that he was reinstated as a Deputy Director on Salary Grade Level 16 and approved him to sit for the promotion examination for Director, Administration, Grade Level 17.
That distinction matters.
The document approved him to sit for the examination. It did not itself state that he had already been appointed Director.
Yet the possibility of promotion made the return even more extraordinary.
A man who had left government under disciplinary circumstances was being restored to the civil service and placed on a path towards a higher grade.
Within weeks, the president ordered his disengagement.
What Made the Affair So Unusual
The Maina story contained several reversals rarely seen in one civil service case.
A senior official became associated with a major government reform programme.
He was dismissed.
He became the subject of criminal proceedings.
He was declared wanted.
An international alert followed.
Then official correspondence initiated a process to restore him to the civil service.
The reinstatement was backdated to the day of his dismissal.
He was approved to sit for a promotion examination.
He appeared at the Ministry of Interior.
The president ordered his disengagement.
Years later, he was convicted and the conviction was upheld on appeal.
The sequence is what made the affair so memorable.
It was not simply the story of a civil servant who disappeared and returned.
It was the story of how a decision could move through several layers of government before becoming visible to the public.
A Return That Raised Questions Beyond One Man
The Maina affair became a revealing episode in Nigeria’s history of public administration because it brought several institutions into the same controversy.
The Attorney General’s office relied on its interpretation of a court judgment.
The Federal Civil Service Commission considered and approved reinstatement.
The Ministry of Interior became the place where Maina resumed work.
The Office of the Head of the Civil Service disputed aspects of how the process had been handled.
The presidency ultimately ordered his disengagement.
Each institution had a different role.
Together, they produced a situation that left Nigerians asking a simple question.
How could a man who had been declared wanted return to federal service at all?
The documentary trail provides much of the answer, but it also shows why the controversy became so difficult to untangle.
The story was not one unexplained act.
It was a chain of decisions.
And for a brief period in 2017, that chain carried Abdulrasheed Maina from dismissal back into the Nigerian civil service, with a promotion examination waiting ahead of him.
His return lasted only briefly.
The questions it raised lasted much longer.
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Author’s Note
The Maina affair is ultimately a story about an extraordinary reversal in Nigeria’s civil service. A senior official dismissed in 2013 and later declared wanted was approved for reinstatement in 2017, with the approval backdated to the date of his dismissal and permission to sit for a Grade Level 17 promotion examination. His return to the Ministry of Interior triggered a national controversy, followed by President Buhari’s order for his disengagement. The later conviction and appeal added another chapter to a case that had already exposed the complicated relationship between court decisions, civil service procedures and government authority.
References
State House, Abuja. “President Buhari Orders Sack of Former PTF Chairman on Pension Reforms.” October 23, 2017.
State House, Abuja. “Press Release: President Buhari Orders Dismissal Of Abdulrasheed Maina From Service.” October 23, 2017.
Federal Civil Service Commission correspondence on the reinstatement of Abdulrasheed Abdullahi Maina, September 18, 2017, as published by The Punch.
The Punch. “INTERPOL declares ex Pension boss, Maina, wanted for N2bn scam.” February 2, 2016.
The Punch. “AGF authorised Maina’s reinstatement, Documents.” October 24, 2017.
The Punch. “EFCC yet to apply to INTERPOL for Maina’s arrest.” 2017.
TheCable. “Maina never reinstated, says Oyo Ita.” November 30, 2017.
Channels Television. “N2.1bn Fraud: Appeal Court Upholds Maina’s Eight Year Sentence.” May 5, 2023.
