By Omoh Gabriel, Henry Umoru & Joseph Erunke

ABUJA— THE Senate, yesterday, passed resolutions asking the Federal Government to urgently terminate the 2013 contract between the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, and SystemSpecs.

It also came up with a resolution halting further deductions the Federal Government could have paid of the N25 billion contract sum to the platform provider based on the charge of one per cent transaction fee for all collections.

The Senate also asked the CBN to ensure that the total refund of the portion of the deductions were retained by the CBN and the Deposit Money Banks, DMBs, and present evidence of compliance to the appropriate Senate committee.

It said consequently, the Treasury Single Account, TSA, regime, transaction fee of one per cent for e-collection and transfer for any computation should be disregarded, just as it urged the CBN to carry out an in- house inquiry to sanitise its procedure for award of contracts as well as identify the culprits in the purported contract.

But Systemspecs in a statement signed, yesterday, by the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Mr. John Obaro, said his company had been very careful to respect the terms of  the contracts it had with the Federal Government, with respect to the TSA.

Blackmail’ ll not distract us —Saraki

Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki, who again vowed that the Senate would not be distracted by what he described as series of blackmail, however, urged the lawmakers to ensure that they saw the proof that the money had been refunded.

He also implored them to ensure they saw the proof that the contracts had been terminated and proof that the new rate was enforced.

The Senate directed that N656,504,100, instead of the claim of N7,650,925,566.40, be provided as transaction costs for fund transfers and collections for the period ending  November, 30, 2015.

“The amount was arrived at using the upper end of the approved band of N700 per transaction for 937,869 transactions for the period between March 1 and November 30,2015,” it added.

These resolutions of the Senate were sequel to recommendations of the Senate Joint Committee on Finance; Banking, Insurance, and other Financial Institutions and Public Accounts on the abuse and mismanagement of Treasury Single Account Regime, TSA.

Committee’s recommendations

Presenting the report of the Committee, Chairman, Senate Committee on Finance and the Joint Committees, Senator John Enoh, said the committee recommended that the CBN should immediately be directed to open up the space to other e- collection providers for competition, effectiveness, efficiency and greater robustness.

It also added that  the apex bank must take adequate steps to avoid compromising national treasury and security, noting that intending vendors as licensors should be willing to negotiate outright sale of solution or annual license fees.

Other approved recommendations by the Senate include that all agreed fees and payments for e-collection service be borne by Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, but that the money should be provided and disbursed from a central pool.

The lawmakers said the money arrived at should be forwarded to the National Assembly for appropriation and accommodation in the 2016 Appropriation Bill.

The committees were also directed to strengthen their oversight role to ensure a hitch-free and smooth implementation of TSA in order to give strong support to the current anti- corruption war and crusade against mismanagement and waste.

The Senate also approved that its Public Accounts should, as a matter of urgency, investigate the sources and utilization of various funds earmarked for implementation of Government Integrated Financial Management Information System, GIFMIS/ TSA platform from its inception in order to determine whether funds had earlier been provided for the various services now being paid for in the CBN Service Agreement.

Earlier in his presentation, Senator Enoh said the committee observed that the full implementation of TSA e-collection kicked off in March 2015 and that all MDAs were required to close all existing accounts, including expenditure, receipt of collections, revenues, projects, etc in Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) and entrust their bankers to transfer available balance to CBN using the CBN payment Gateway (Remita).

N30bn saved with discovery 

Speaking further, Saraki said:  “I commend them because we all know the kind of pressure they must have been through to do the right thing and stand in the interest of Nigerian public.

“I think the message we are sending out today is very clear, that whatever is in the interest of our great country to ensure proper use of funds, this Senate will stand firmly for that and this goes back to the issues where people wonder the usefulness or value of the parliament.  I think this is a good example.

“By this action, this country is saving close to between N22 billion and N30 billion which is higher than the appropriation of a lot of ministries and MDAs today and will go a long way in addressing the problem of education and health.

“I think what we have done today, we will have to ensure that the respective agencies, particularly CBN, must refund this money, complying strictly with these observations and recommendations of the Senate.”

We’ve respected terms of agreement with FG

—Systemspecs

But reacting to the Senate position yesterday, Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Systemspecs, Mr. John Obaro, said the company had always respected the terms of agreement it had with the Federal Government on TSA.

He said:  “It is fulfilling to note that the Senate report did not accuse Remita of under-delivering on the substance of the contract and that our efforts are recognised as having played a significant role in the life of the nation when it mattered and that the disagreement has only been on the commercial terms of our contract.

“The Senate Committee further recommended that SystemSpecs’ efforts should be rewarded – albeit on a scale which is quite debatable.

“For emphasis, we wish to state that the TSA project goes beyond revenue collections and extends to payments, accounting information exchange and update, full real-time integration with GIFMIS, integration with the national financial services ecosystem enabling payers across multiple platforms, 24/7 user support for 50,000 FGN TSA users of Remita platform, among others.”