The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of REMITA, Mr. ‘Deremi Atanda , says the sum of N34.311 trillion revenue was generated through its platform into the Federation Account between 2015 and 2022.
He said this when he appeared before the House of Representatives Public Account Committee (PAC), in Abuja.
He noted that the sum of 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 realised in 2022 fiscal year, respectively.
He also dismissed insinuation that REMITA imposed additional fee apart from the approved N150 (which represents 10 cents at current exchange rate) on the revenue generating MDAs.
He explained that the REMITA payment gateway platform provides additional technology services to the Federation at no cost, despite pay in foreign exchange for hosting the platform on cloud based platform.
According to him, the firm was engaged by the CBN as part of efforts geared towards shoring up revenue of the federation.
The Managing Director also said that relevant agreements were signed and standard operating procedures were followed.
Mr. Atanda added that the
Central Bank of Nigeria and the 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.
Probe
Meanwhile, the House of Representatives Public Account Committee (PAC) has insisted that the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr. Wale Edun and CBN Governor, Yemi Cardoso must appear before it in respect to the probe of alleged revenue leakages through REMITA platform.
The PAC chairman Bamidele Salam, insisted that Edun and Cardoso must appear before the lawmakers in person.
The Committee also registered its displeasure over the daunting challenge of fixing infrastructure and building human capital for the growth of the economy.
The Chairman of the committee Hon. Salam also stressed the need for active collaboration of Ministeries Departments and Agencies of government with the Parliament, with the view to block leakages of public revenues by shoring up earnings from their sources.
Stakeholders who appeared at the hearing include; the representatives of the Accountant General of the Federation’s office, Banking organisations, amongst others.