The Senate has directed the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, to terminate its contract with Systemspecs Limited, owner of Remita, an electronic payment solution for the operation of Treasury Single Account, TSA, for the Nigerian Government.
Sequel to the adoption of a motion by Dino Melaye (APC-Kogi State), the Senate had, last year, set up an ad-hoc committee headed by John Enoh (PDP-Cross River State) to investigate allegations that the TSA was being mismanaged and that Systemspecs was making excessive profit off the country.
In his motion on the floor of the Senate, Melaye had alleged that for every transaction conducted through REMITA, Systemspecs charged the government one percent, thereby making N2.5 billion after mopping up N25 Billion transferred to the treasury.
The report of the investigative committee was presented on Wednesday.
Sen. Enoh said his committee confirmed that Systemspecs charged a one-percent fee on every transaction on its platform.
Based on this confirmation by the committee chairman and President Muhammadu Buhari’s disclosure that his government recouped N2 trillion through the TSA, Systemspecs would have netted N20 billion so far.
The committee recommended that the “2013 contract renewal between Systemspecs and the CBN be terminated forthwith”.
It also advised that the “TSA one percent transaction fee be disregarded”.
Other recommendations were that the CBN should carry out an in-house inquiry to sanitise its procedure for the award of contracts and that it should identify the culprits in the contract and recommend them for prosecution.
The recommendations were adopted by the Senate.
The Senate, however, asked the CBN to pay Systemspecs agreed fee for the services it had rendered.
