Federation Account gets N34. 311tr via REMITA in 7 years’

About N34.311 trillion revenue was generated through REMITA platform into the Federation Account between 2015 and 2022, Managing Director of REMITA, Deremi Atanda has said.

Atanda spoke yesterday when he appeared before the House of Representatives Committee on Public Account during an investigative hearing on ‘alleged revenue leakages through REMITA platform and non-compliance with standard operating procedure and other allied service agreement’.

However, to ascertain the veracity of the agreement between the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Systemspec/REMITA on the revenue collection, the Committee headed by Bamidele Salam  resolved to invite the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy,  Wale Edun and CBN Governor Yemi Cardoso to give account of the roles played by each of the institutions in the contract.

According to documents presented to the Public Accounts Committee, instead of the N343.109 billion fee income due to the company at a contracted rate of one per cent flat, only 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 the stakeholders are to share N150 per transaction – Banks 33 per cent, CBN – 11 per cent, NIBBS – 10.5 per cent, Office of Accountant-General of the Federation (oAGF) gets 2.5 per cent, while REMITA and other stakeholders including card issuers are entitled to 43 per cent of the chargeable fees.

Dismissing insinuation that REMITA imposed additional fee apart from the approved N150 on the revenue-generating MDAs, Atanda said the REMITA payment gateway platform provides additional technology services to the government at no cost, despite paying in foreign exchange for hosting the platform on cloud based platform.

According to him, N1.5 trillion was remitted through the platform in 2015, N2.8 trillion in 2016, N3.7 trillion in 2017, N4.6 trillion in 2018, N4.6 trillion in 2019, N4.2 trillion in 2020 being COVID year, N6 trillion in 2021 while N6.8 trillion was realized in 2022 fiscal year, respectively.

While confirming that CBN engaged REMITA to provide the service as part of efforts geared towards shoring up revenue accrued to federation, he confirmed that relevant agreements were signed and standard operating procedures were followed.

He said the one per cent 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 maintained that CBN and 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.

Responding to questions on possible area of leakages, he urged the Parliament to ensure that all dollar related revenue are captured into the revenue collection gateway, as focus has been strictly only the naira revenue over the past eight to nine years.

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, and dismissed allegation that REMITA has some unaccounted for revenue, adding that there is no N29 billion accrued from National Housing Fund (NHF) trapped on Remita payment platform as alleged by one of the lawmakers.

While responding to question on the contract signed with Remita, Director Single Treasury, Mr. Mohammed Bello in the office of the

The Accountant General of the Federation said that the 2.5per cent fee accrued to oAGF goes directly into the Federal Government’s account, not OAGF’s account.

He also said that efforts are ongoing to capture revenue being paid through foreign exchange into revenue payment platform, adding that the pilot scheme arrangement being worked out in collaboration with Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs will come up in the next few weeks.

Chairman of the Committee Bamidele Salam who underscored the need for physical appearance of the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, CBN Governor and Accountant General of the Federation before the Committee, on Tuesday, 20th February, 2024.