The Public Accounts Committee of the House of Representatives on Wednesday quizzed Remita Payment Services Limited (RPSL)/SystemSpecs over the alleged remittance leakages and non-compliance substantively with the standard operating procedure and other allied service level agreements 2023.
The committee chaired by Representative Bamidele Salam (Osun-PDP) questioned the online payment service provider over the allegations leveled against it by the house.
It recalls that the House of Representatives resolved to investigate alleged revenue leakages through the Remita platform.
Remita is an online payment service provider owned by SystemSpecs, a financial services company.
The platform is used by federal government agencies to remit revenue into the treasury single account (TSA).
The Chairman in his opening remarks “We all know the importance of the issue of revenue is to any government, especially at a time like this in the history of our country where we have a quite very bothering challenge of fixing infrastructure and building our human capital.
“The statistics are not smiling at all, in 2020 we had an aggregate revenue of about N8.5 billion and expenditure of N17.5 billion. If we look at the general pattern of our budgetary earn and spending, in the last few years if you agree with me that it calls for concern as well as a concerted effort for everyone to put heads together and see what exactly we need to do, going by the fact that our debt service ratio too the general expenditure pattern as raising from over 13 per cent to 28.74 per cent in the 2024 budget where we are planning to spend about N7 trillion.
“The revenue we are looking forward to in the same year is about N19.5 trillion which will leave us with a deficit of about N9 trillion. The N9 trillion will be sourced mainly from external borrowing for a country of about 200 million people, for a country with so many challenges in times of our infrastructure, school systems, roads, water, and hospitals, you will agree with me that we need to do better and one of the ways through parliament believes we can do better is to ensure that we work together to block all leakages of public revenues and see how we can shoring our earnings from all the sources all our nations revenues.
“I am saying this so that I can encourage us all and everyone who will be participating in this public hearing to please see how we can work together for the purpose of achieving the desired goal of this investigation.
“Let me also quickly say that this investigation those not have any preconceived conclusion, we are very open-minded minded, open to views, suggestions, opinions, and comments. I also want to say that this investigation hearing is not also to wit hurt any particular individual or organization, we have only one Country.”
The Managing Director, Deremi Atanda who appeared with Staffs said that the Central Bank of Nigeria has a Contract engagement with SystemSpecs which stipulated the application of the term for the treasury single account (TSA) fees of N150 per transaction for all services in respective of the amount of revenue to the government.
He noted that N34.311 trillion in revenue was generated through the REMITA platform into the Federation Account between 2015 and 2022.
According to him, “In the year 2015, there was a total of N1.5 trillion revenue processed as inflows across different channels into the CBN account for the TSA, there were 781 MDAs that were part of this collections.
“In the year 2016, there were 1073 MDAs, about 9 million transactions, and a total revenue inflow of N2.8 trillion directly to the account of government at the Central Bank.
“In the year 2017, there was an increase of MDAs that as complied and there were 1016 MDAs through 11 million transactions of a total revenue of inflow into the account of the different MDAs total N3.7 trillion.
“In the year 2018, there was also growth in compliance with about 15 million transactions totaling about N4.6 trillion inflow into the various accounts of these MDAs at the Central Bank.
“In the year 2019, there was a total collection of about N4.6 trillion directly into the account of about 1200 MDAs into the central bank account.
“In the year 2020, Obviously that was a COVID year, there was a total transaction of about 9 million representing 1131 MDAs of N4.2 trillion in the account of these MDAs at the Central Bank of Nigeria.
“In the year 2021, about 13 million transactions with the marked increase of about N6 trillion revenue inflow directly into the cover of government domicile at the central bank of Nigeria respect of 1199 MDAs.
“In the year 2022, as requested, there were 1137 MDAs with about 14.2 million transactions total about N6.8 trillion directly into the covers of the government of Nigeria at the Central Bank of Nigeria.”
Atanda also presented to the Committee, that instead of N343.109 billion fee income due at the contracted rate of one percent flat which the stakeholders are entitled to (against the conventional five to seven percent fee) according to the agreement signed in 2015, the sum of N23.922 billion actual fee income was applied.
“Based on the 2018 circular on the chargeable fees guidelines on e-collection, the sharing formula showed that all the stakeholders are to share the sum of N150 per transaction – Banks 33%, CBN – 11%, NIBBS – 10.5%, office of Accountant General of the Federation (oAGF) gets 2.5%, while REMITA and other stakeholders including card issuers are entitled to 43% of the chargeable fees” he noted.
While dismissing insinuation that REMITA imposed additional fee apart from the approved N150 (which represents 10 cents at the current exchange rate) on the revenue generating MDAs, Mr. Atanda disclosed that the REMITA payment gateway platform provides additional technology services to the Federation at no cost, despite pay in foreign exchange for hosting the platform on cloud-based platform.
Mr. Atanda who confirmed that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) engaged REMITA to provide the service as part of efforts geared towards shoring up revenue accrued to the Federation, affirmed that relevant agreements were signed and standard operating procedures were followed.
According to him, the one percent agreement fee payable to all the stakeholders involved in the contract agreement was reached in 2020 following an earlier investigative hearing conducted where CBN, Banks, REMITA, and other staff involved were asked to refund the chargeable fees collected from the services provided since inception.
He also disclosed that CBN and the office of the Accountant General of the Federation have 100 percent access to the platform while all revenues accruing into each of the 1,137 MDAs that pay through the REMITA platform get the funds immediately and such revenues are accessed by the apex bank on daily basis.
He however noted that the number of MDAs that pay through REMITA has been inconsistent as some get approval to pull out at various times.
He also dismissed the allegation that REMITA has some unaccounted-for revenue, adding that there is no N29 billion accrued from the National Housing Fund (NHF) trapped on the Remita payment platform as alleged by one of the lawmakers.
While responding to a question on the contract signed with Remita, Accountant General of the Federation who was represented by Director Single Treasury, Mr. Mohammed Bello disclosed that the 2.5% fee accrued to oAGF goes directly into the Federal Government’s account, not OAGF’s account.
He also added that efforts are ongoing to capture revenue being paid through foreign exchange into a revenue payment platform, adding that the pilot scheme arrangement being worked out in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs will come up in the next few weeks
The committee also frowned at the absence of the Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Mr. Olayemi Cardoso at its sitting and moved a motion to invite the CBN governor and Attorney General of Federation, Lateef Fagbemi on the 20th of February 2024.
The Chairman ordered that Remita/SystemSpecs present all statements of Accounts and the trial Balance of all MDAs for the period under review in a soft copy as follows Transaction date, Agency code, Agency name, RRR number, Payer’s name, Revenue code, Revenue service/description, Amount, and Charges.
