The House Public Accounts Committee has directed financial technology company Remita to refund 182.77 billion guilds to the federal government. The amount has been said to have been detained from the Ministry of Finance’s Section Account (TSA) since 2015.
The directive, released at a committee meeting in Abuja on Wednesday after the forensic audit report was submitted by consulting firm Seyi Katola & Company (Chartered Accountant), revealed a significant difference in revenue remittances.
Remita, owned by financial services company SystemSpecs, is an online platform for federal government agencies to transfer revenue to TSA. In November 2023, the House of Representatives passed the platform to investigate suspicious revenue leaks.
Committee Chairman Bamidele Salam said the decision was made based on evidence presented by forensic auditors and documents submitted by other stakeholders in the Remita and TSA ecosystem.
Adewale Oyebamiji, managing partner of the audit firm, introduced the liability segmentation and pointed out that SystemSpecs is responsible for the transaction processing fees of 3.42 billion guilds, and the unpaid acquirer fees are N101.85 million n1018.5 billion n18.5 billion n17.925 billion n17.925 billion n17.925 billion n17.925 billion n.
The report also applied the monetary policy rate of the central bank of Nigeria at 27.25% to determine the interest charge. According to the survey results, the fees for insufficient transaction processing fees were 993 million n993 million, and the interest fees were 2.42 billion n2.42 billion, totaling 3.42 billion guilds. For unpaid acquirer fees, 29.6 million guild due, and the interest fee is 72.25 million n12.5 billion, totaling guild n101.85 billion. Regarding the discomfort of collecting payments, the interest rate for 54.24 billion guilds is 125 million guilds, totaling 17.9 billion guilds.
The report said: “The Committee hereby recommends that SystemSpecs Ltd be forced to return the sum of the Federal Government Asset Recovery Account (CBN) of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), N182,769,245,175.20, Account No.: 0020054161191.”
The committee noted that some deposit banks have complied with similar refund directives and urged other TSA value chain service providers to not comply.
Chairman Salam praised the forensic auditors, who he called it a thorough and patriotic investigation.
