What would have happened if Nigeria’s economy were running without today’s TSA (Treasury Single Account)?
A situation where the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) operated a motley 17,000 bank accounts; where the MDAs themselves did not know of the existence of many of these accounts; government itself did not know the volume of funds it had in commercial banks; yet the MDAs have to go to the same commercial banks for loans at high interest rate; all still in a recession, the ultimate scenario must be anarchy – economic anarchy – at least.
This anarchy has been averted and Nigeria’s economy still breathes, thanks to Remita’s TSA operation.
Managing Director, SystemSpecs, Mr. John Obaro, said Nigeria’s economy would have been worse off if not for the implementation of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) by the Buhari led government.
Obaro who made the assertion during an exclusive interview with TheNewsGuru, said the adoption of TSA has helped to bring all data about the financial operations of the Nigerian government together for easy understanding of the nation’s cash position.
And evaluating the current situation, he is sure with all humility, of positive impact of SystemSpecs’ payment platform, Remita, on the federal government resources identification and management. “I know the economy is bad today but it would have been worse without TSA,” says Obaro.
“We had a situation where about 17,000 accounts owned by several Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) were scattered everywhere. Some MDAs didn’t even know some of the accounts they had because some of the signatories of such accounts are no longer in the public service. So government did not even know how much it had.
“Just look at yourself on a lower scale either as a company or as an individual; it is like a husband and wife running independent finances, putting monies in some banks. In their net positions, they are actually rich but because they don’t know their status, they started going to those banks to get loans and pay interests on such borrowings.
“That was what was happening to the federal government, some MDA’s had money in the banks and other MDAs were borrowing money from same banks and paying interest”.
To Obaro, this was double tragedy because government could have been richer ,being in a position to invest part of such monies and possibly get some interests rather than leaving them in commercial banks, taking loans and then paying interests on them.
Obaro whose platform now handles the refund of Federal Government funds in commercial banks to the Central Bank of Nigeria also affirmed that the central monitoring of the accounts by the government has helped in combating some of the challenges erstwhile faced in its cash operations.
Explaining how he got the contract, Obaro said, “The origin is that the Central Bank of Nigeria as part of its functions had come in to review our licensing as a payment solution service provider. We had made our presentations and they were asking questions and we never knew that they were having challenges.
“At the point in time, they had written to the office of the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF) that the TSA project be delayed for about two years to enable them source a proper solution because they had had people come in from abroad and locally but it was not any way close to what we had.”
“When they saw what we had, they called us back, took us through an evaluation process in the presence of their external consultant, the ministry of finance, office of the AGF. They reviewed it and that is how we got the TSA contract.”
Speaking on the controversy which trailed the revenue that accrued to SystemSpecs from the Remita project with the government, Obaro said it was unfortunate that his company found itself in the unnecessarily heated environment.
He further said: “We were in the middle of a storm last year, there was some misinformation, and an accusation was made that a company was making N25bn and that whipped up sentiments and not many people were able to look at the fact but the intervention of President Muhammadu Buhari, Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun among others helped us clarify the controversy.
At the end of the day, the truth came out, that Remita is only a platform to assist the implementation of the TSA and incidentally it was the government that fixed the figures, we did not,” he noted.
The SystemSpecs boss strongly believes that Remita has also helped in the Buhari’s war against corruption.
“Corruption thrives in an environment of secrecy, but when people know that whatever they are doing can come under the searchlight very easily, that in itself helps to put some sanity into the system. What Remita has done is that it has made it very easy to trace the movement of funds. The mere fact that information in all MDAs can be accessible is a major step towards the fight against corruption. “ Obaro ended.