Abuja – Operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS) have arrested Faisal Abdulrasheed Maina, the son of Abdulrasheed Maina, the former chairman of the defunct Pension Reform Task Team, and handed him over to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). The arrest took place on Friday, 16 October 2026, in the Karsana area of Abuja, following intelligence that he had secretly returned to Nigeria after years as a fugitive.
Security sources confirmed that DSS operatives tracked Faisal to Karsana and took him into custody before transferring him to the EFCC. The development ends a six-year period during which he remained at large after jumping bail.
Faisal had been on the run since 2020. The EFCC had arraigned him on a three-count charge of money laundering and conspiracy. He violated the conditions of his bail and left the country, forcing the trial to continue in his absence. In October 2021, Justice Okon Abang of the Federal High Court in Abuja convicted him and sentenced him to 14 years’ imprisonment. The court found that he operated a fictitious United Bank for Africa (UBA) account in the name of “Alhaji Faisal Farm 2”, through which approximately ₦58.1 million was laundered. The funds were deposited into the account and withdrawn by Faisal and his father between October 2013 and June 2019.
In November 2022, the Court of Appeal in Abuja upheld the conviction but reduced the sentence from 14 years to seven years. The appellate court held that the trial judge should not have imposed the maximum term on a first-time offender. The Federal High Court had previously ordered that Faisal be arrested wherever he was found in Nigeria and remanded in a correctional centre to serve his sentence.
His father, Abdulrasheed Maina, was the central figure in one of Nigeria’s most notorious pension scandals. As chairman of the Pension Reform Task Team, he was convicted of laundering roughly ₦2 billion in pension funds and served an eight-year term at the Kuje Correctional Centre in Abuja. He was released earlier in 2026 but was subsequently declared wanted in connection with other alleged offences.
With Faisal now in EFCC custody, the commission is expected to take steps to enforce the Court of Appeal’s reduced seven-year sentence. The arrest has drawn renewed attention to the long-running Maina family cases and the broader pension fraud that first brought the name into national prominence more than a decade ago.
By A.Ikechukwu
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