Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (OAGF) have started work over a compromise to resolve the controverted status of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) platform provider and commercial banks and fees earned.
The platform provider SystemSpecs, and the commercial banks had been embroiled in dispute with the federal government over service fees since the start of TSA e-Collections programme began.
The latest effort to resolve what analysts now calls a ‘disheartening crisis of confidence’, comes six months after the platform provider and the commercial banks were shockingly directed to hand over processing fees for services already provided with further instructions to stop all charges for TSA revenue collection services to the Federal Government.
Sources conversant with the dispute confirmed that SystemSpecs and the commercial banks had not been paid for their services since the start of TSA e-Collections despite entireties to the CBN, which also highlighted subsisting contract for the services they provide.
The confusion, sources say, started after the Director of Banking and Payments Systems Department, Dipo Fatokun, wrote to the parties to say he had been directed to ask SystemSpecs Limited, the provider of the FGN TSA platform to return all fees earned since the inception of the project.
Fatokun’s letter was followed by another recommendation by The Senate, which declined to put its fund under the TSA, in February 2016 to terminate the contract between the Government and SystemSpecs, owners of the Remita platform that drives the Treasury Single Account (TSA) of the Federal Government.
Deremi Atanda, a senior executive at SystemSpecs, said the firm has been in talk with the CBN, Accountant General of the Federation and Ministry of Finance to resolve the mater soon as “it is becoming increasingly difficult to continue to provide services without being paid.”
Sources say current steps by the CBN is a confidence booster and a reassurance that the parties involved in the dispute will come to terms despite any objections from the Senate.
