…..Polaris Bank drill over alleged remittance leakages
By Joshua Afolabi, Abuja
The House of Representatives Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has slammed the Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) over the submission of an undated engagement Contract with SystemSpecs.
This came to the limelight today, 15th February 2024 as the committee resumed hearing on the investigation of revenue leakages through Remita and non-compliance substantively with standard operating procedure and other allied service level agreement 2023.
The document submitted to the Committee revealed that none of the engagement contracts signed by Systemspecs and Guarantee Trust Bank was dated.
According to Rep. Mathew Nwogu (LP, Imo) “When a contract is signed and it is not dated, is that Contract valid? The contract that GTB entered with SystemSpecs Limited, when was that agreement entered? If you don’t have an agreement dated are you aware that you don’t have any agreement? Are you aware that you are operating illegally’? None of the copies you have was dated, if a copy is not dated, it means there is no agreement by law,” he questioned
In his presentation, the General Manager of GTB represented by the Assistant General manager, Bulama Laminu who appeared with his Staff said, “The Systemspecs Holding Limited (SHL) integrated the bank to Remita platform in 2015 on behalf of the Central Bank Of Nigeria (CBN) for the Treasury Single Account (TSA). For the past seven years (7) we have collected the sum of N1 trillion and our fees are N789.2 billion.”
Giving a breakdown of the revenue generated for the Federal Government through REMİTA in the last seven years he said, “In 2015 we collected N41.6 billion; in 2016, N112.4 billion; in 2017, N132.5 billion; in 2018, N161.9 billion; in 2019, N105 billion; in 2020, N130.8 billion, in 2021, N226.5 billion; and, in 2022, N136.1 billion.”
He said that the sharing formula showed that all the stakeholders are to share the sum of N150 per transaction – Banks 33%, CBN – 11%, NIBBS – 10.5%, office of Accountant General of the Federation (oAGF) gets 2.5%, while REMITA and other stakeholders including card issuers are entitled to 43% of the chargeable fees
Also, the Polaris Bank General Manager, Dele Adeyinka, and his staff who also appeared before the Committee said that the banks collected the sum of N994.5 billion from 2015 to 2022.
Adeyinka said Polaris was integrated into the Remita platform in 2015 and by extension the Treasury Single Account that was stipulated for public accounts in the Country to drive all of their transaction through.
According to him, “The revenue we generated for the Federal Government through REMİTA in the last seven years is “In 2015 we collected N78.8 billion; in 2016, N75 billion; in 2017, N73.6 billion; in 2018, N67.2 billion; in 2019, N66.4 billion; in 2020, N148 billion, in 2021, N245.9 billion; and, in 2022, N239.2 billion and our fees are N789.2 billion”
Ruling on the matter, the PAC Deputy Chairman, Rep. Jeremiah Umaru ordered all banks that appeared to present all statements of Accounts and the trial Balance of all MDAs for the period under review in a soft copy as follows Transaction date, Agency code, Agency name, RRR number, Payer’s name, Revenue code, Revenue service/description, Amount, and Charges.
