The family of ex-chairman of the defunct Pension Reform Task Team, Abdulrasheed Maina, have said that he (Maina) had been on life support medication for over 15 years.
In a statement on Monday signed by Abdullahi Usman, the family also disclosed that Maina had been surviving on supports he gets from family and relatives since leaving office.
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Maina is being charged with 12 counts bordering on money laundering, operating fictitious bank accounts and fraud.
Last week, he arrived in court in a wheelchair, raising questions about the state of his health.
The family, however, said that Maina was not making it up, and denied that he was getting kingly treatment in prison.
“It is absolutely not true that Maina is receiving any presidential treatment in Kuje prison where he is being detained. He is placed under the usual prison conditions in an uncomfortable cell that is dilapidated.
“It is also a figment of the imagination of those who concocted the lies that Maina is receiving visitors at will. It is in fact a more difficult task than the usual prison processes of visiting detained person, to gain access or be allowed to visit Maina in detention. Several family and friends have made efforts to see him but all to no avail,” the statement said.
The family added: “Maina was on life support, medication for over 15 years, you can confirm this from his medical records. Maina had survived on control drugs treatment for many years and his condition got deteriorated due to lack of access to his prescribed medications while in detention, a hereditary health condition also being faced by his son Faisal Abdurrasheed.
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“He also suffers severe backache due to the ill-condition of his place of detention. Recently, Maina spent three days in the prison hospital and is seriously indisposed to stand trial in that condition. The court acted rightly based on medical reports presented to it for which it moved the case further to allow him resuscitate.”
They called for justice, adding that Maina was only “paying the price for protecting the pension funds from looters and extorting funds termites.”
