Group petitions Senate over resolutions on TSA

A resolution by the Senate on implementation of the TSA, has been condemned by a civil society group, Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders, CACOL.

The group alleged that the upper legislative chamber was planning to kill the transparent idea.

The Senate, had during consideration of report submitted by its Committee on Finance on the TSA implementation, directed the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to terminate the contract it had with Systemspecs, the owner of Remita, the e- collection platform alleged to have collected about N8billion as commission from N800billion facilitated into the account on the basis of 1% commission charge.

The upper legislative chamber went further in its resolution by fixing N659 million as commission charges to be paid by the Central Bank of Nigeria ( CBN),to Remita in the N800 billion e- collection into the account based on N700 per transaction.

But CACOL, in a petition forwarded to the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, accused the Upper Chamber of seeking to frustrate the application of the TSA policy through the resolutions.

Accordingly, the group, in the petition, asked the Senate to immediately rescind its position, pointing out that “the recommendations, if implemented as adopted, would represent a deadly attack on the Federal Government’s TSA project with a view to killing it and reversing all the gains recorded within the short time of its implementation.”

The petition, signed by the executive chairman of CACOL, Debo Adeniran, raised the following questions about the resolution of Senate.

“Could it then be safe to conclude that there is a move within the Senate to use the termination of the contract which will naturally frustrate the TSA project, still at its infancy, as an excuse to exempt the Senate from compliance with TSA to which President Muhammadu Buhari has consistently pledged commitment?

“Did the Senate consider possible implications of forcing the CBN to IMMEDIATELY terminate the contract?

“What measures, if any, has the Senate proposed to manage the consequences on the economy of immediate disruption of the already settled nationwide TSA payment and revenue collection processes?

“How will the about 900 MDAs already operating on TSA continue their payment and revenue generation operations the next morning after the CBN is forced to cancel the Remita contract?

“What should happen to the investment in infrastructure, processes and people already put in place on account of the FGN TSA by the 18 commercial banks, over 400 micro-finance banks and other players in the electronic financial ecosystem?

“How are the millions of Nigerians who now pay for critical health services and students who pay tuition and other fees through TSA supposed to undertake such transactions the morning after the CBN would have been railroaded to cancel the Remita contract?”

The group further said: “It is perplexing to say the least why contract termination is the one and only call of the Senate in a matter its own committee firmly established as being one of mainly commercial terms, as it expressly stated in Section 6.1.4 of its report “what is rather in contention is the cost and terms of engagement of vendors whose services have been procured for the implementation of TSA’s e-collections?”

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