Couple returns N1.78million mistakenly paid to them by Kogi State Government despite being owed for months

                       

Mrs Husseina Mohammed, who is a civil servant in kogi state has achieved a huge feat alongside her husband, Yakubu after they returned the sum of paid in excess of her March salary back to the state government, Nigerian Tribune reports.

Husseina Mohammed is a level seven accountant in the service of the Kogi State government, attached to the Teaching Service Commission (TSC) in Lokoja, the state capital. Her monthly salary is approximately N34,000.

However, one morning, while shopping, Husseina’s phone beeped, indicating a text message. Upon opening the folder containing the SMS, she saw that her salary account domiciled in Zenith Bank, Lokoja Branchhad been credited with N1, 787, 550.98k. The text message stated that it was her salary for the month of March, 2017.

Shocked, Husseina told Nigerian Tribune that she read the message over and over again. Aside reading the message repeatedly, she took her time to count the figures displayed in the message. After a while, she abandoned the materials she had come to buy and found her way home.

On getting home, she narrated her experience to her husband. After a brief interaction, they decided to refund the money, saying that it was the right thing to do. The decision to refund the money was expected to be a difficult one for the family because of their peculiar situation, but it became the simplest one for them, the couple stated.

Husseina’s husband, an employee of the TSC in Lokoja, was one of those affected by the ongoing screening exercise in the state. He disclosed that For 15 months, he argued that he had not received any salary from government.

Throughout this period the family depended on the salary of the wife that was also not promptly paid for survival. Many believed the money wrongly paid into her account should have been a solution to the problem facing them. But that was not to be, the money was not allowed to stay beyond 24 hours in the account as it was returned to the coffers of the government.

To Mohammed, despite the fact that government owed her husband 15 months’ salary, her upbringing and religious belief would not allow her to illegally enrich the family.

Narrating her story, she said: “The story about what happened is that my husband has not been paid for 15 months. I found N1.78 million belonging to the state government in my account. Despite the fact that the government owes us about 16 months’ salary arrears (my husband and I included), I refunded the money to the state government. I wrote a letter, which I copied the accountant general, the chairman of the TSC and the Director General, Bureau of Information and Grassroots Mobilisation, that I had refunded the money.”

On what first struck her mind when she got the alert, Husseina said, “When I saw the money, what went through my mind was that there were many people out there suffering because they had not been paid and then mistakenly the government paid the money into my account. I immediately knew the money was meant for other people, not me.”