The minister assured the
citizens that no one has tampered with the TSA funds, saying though the TSA was
initiated under the previous administration, the reason it has begun to enjoy a
new lease of life and attract national attention was because of the political
will and transparency demonstrated by President Buhari.
“Those behind the
rumour that a single company, Systemspecs, made N25 billion from charging one
per cent of TSA funds that passed through the company’s software, Remita, may
need to return to elementary school to get some lessons in arithmetic.
“This is because in
order for one per cent charge to fetch N25 billion, the funds accruing into the
TSA must have reached N2.5 trillion. Yet, the total amount of funds in the TSA
to date is still much less than N2 trillion.
‘’More importantly,
at the time the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) ordered that all
monies that were erroneously charged as ‘revenue’ be returned to the TSA
Account late last month, the TSA had less than N800 billion. It, therefore,
beggars belief that anyone could attempt to mislead the public by raising a
false alarm that a firm made N25 billion in TSA charges,’’ Mohammed said.
He appealed to
Nigerians not to allow those who have been funding their lavish lifestyles and
encouraging corruption, to the detriment of ordinary citizens and without
bothering about national interest, to sabotage the laudable TSA programme with
contrived lies, dangerous innuendoes and outright misinformation.
It was Mr. Melaye who originally moved the motion on the Senate
floor for the payment to be investigated.
Last Wednesday, following Mr. Melaye’s
motion, the senate ordered its committee on finance and public accounts to
immediately commence an investigation into the use of Remita (which it
erroneously described as an e-collection agent) for remitting government funds
into the TSA, and its alleged collection of N25 billion commission being one
per cent of the alleged N2.5 trillion it remitted into the TSA.
Mr. Melaye had argued that the use of
Remita was a violation of Section 162(1) of the constitution, which stated that
“the federation shall maintain a special account to be called the federation
account into which all revenues collected by the government of the federation
except the proceeds from the personal income tax of the personnel of the Armed
Forces of the Federation, the Nigeria Police Force, the ministry or department
of government charged with foreign affairs and the residents of the FCT,
Abuja”.
Mr. Melaye further stated that the
Central Bank of Nigeria could only appoint a registered bank as an agent for
collecting and disbursing the funds.
He said that since Remita was not a
bank, its appointment as a collection agent was in violation of the CBN Act and
the Banks and Other Financial Institutions Act (BOFIA) 2007.
According to him, Remita collected N25
billion “for doing nothing.”
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