The House of Representatives on Monday continued its investigations into how Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government defraud the Federal Government in conjunction with insurance companies.

The ad hoc committee in charge of the probe has discovered how the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency and the Nigerian Railways Corporation paid premiums on non-functional properties in the tune of N288m.

NIMASA was discovered to have insured a faulty lift while the railway corporation paid premium on non-functional generators between 2013 and 2015.

Chairman of the committee, Adekunle Akinlade, revealed how lawmakers visited the affected agencies to verify their insurance records only to discover that they lied.

He explained, “We went there to verify their claims and were surprised that for three years, NIMASA had a lift that never worked for one day, yet they were paying premium on it.

“The staff there told us that the lift never lifted a single person for one day.

“Then, there was the case of generators in the second corporation. They insured four, but three were already dead.

“But, each passing year, they paid insurance companies money for the four, including the three that were dead.

“There were really no insurance covers; money was just signed out, our money was taken into somebody’s pockets.”

Akinlade said the MDAs assigned insurance transactions to officers with limited knowledge in a bid to defraud the government.

“Almost all the MDAs have no trained insurance personnel as schedule officers.

“You are signing billions of Naira on insurance, yet you have no trained insurance persons to man such an important area. It is deliberate,” he said.

Azeez