CACOL view as counter-productive, retrogressive and suspect the recent move by the Senate in the resolutions passed asking the Federal Government to urgently terminate the 2013 contract between the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, and SystemSpecs. According to reports, one of the resolutions also called for the halting further deductions the Federal Government could have paid of the N25 billion contract sum to the platform provider based on the charge of one per cent transaction fee for all collections.
Reacting to the development, Mr. Debo Adeniran, Executive Chairman, Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders (CACOL) said “the Senate’s plan is akin to ‘killing’ the Treasury Single Account (TSA) initiative and this is tantamount to unplugging the holes of corruption that has already been plugged by the very effective strategy that has helped the country to check fraud and promote accountability’’.
“In six months the Federal has been able to save about 2.2 trillion naira through the TSA initiative, an amount that is about half the budget for 2015; this huge sum of money would have ended up in private pockets without trace. Why then would anyone want to kill the TSA or undermine the idea if it has been so beneficial to the country? It is our opinion that most of those opposed to the TSA initiative are those who were beneficiaries of the leakages that the TSA has been able to block’’ Mr. Adeniran continued.
CACOL holds the belief that the controversies over TSA are unwarranted; just like the whole anti-corruption war is coming under attacks, the TSA is facing a similar fate, it is corruption fighting back. We believe it is not really the contractor or the contract awardee that is at the bottom of these controversies but the recalcitrant attitude of those that want the old ways of corruption to be sustained.
Mr. Adeniran clarified further that, “one would have expected the Senate in playing its’ oversight functions to convincingly expose any foul play or discrepancies and violations with facts and figures over the TSA in relation to the contract signed; proffer its’ alternative which must be better and above all ensure that the country does not backslide in terms of losing the gains of the TSA strategy so far. Anything short of this is suspect and may amount to an attempt to hoodwink Nigerians to achieve ends that are not clear to Nigerians and may not be in favour of national development.’’
Wale Salami
Media Coordinator, CACOL
080141121208
cacolc@yahoo.com,cacol@thehumanitycentre.org
February 26, 2016.