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…accuses FG of using Remita to defraud Nigeria
Ekiti State governor, Mr. Ayodele Fayose has said that local government elections scheduled to hold on December 19 will go on with or without the All Progressives Congress (APC).
He said this following threats by the APC to boycott the elections.
Fayose also stated that his state is entitled to its own policies and not under any obligation to accept Federal Government policies, especially the Treasury Single Account (TSA) policy.
This is just as he said would not attend a meeting summoned by the government to discuss the Treasury Single Account, TSA.
He accused the Federal Government of using e-Payment firm, Remita to defraud Nigeria, in the implementation of the TSA policy.
Remita has recently been embroiled in some corruption controversy after the senate decided to launch an investigation into allegations that the company, contracted to manage the TSA for Nigeria, was ripping the country off.
Fayose in a statement by his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Mr. Lere Olayinka claimed that the TSA was a policy aimed at raising money for the forthcoming Kogi and Bayelsa States governorship polls.
His words: ‘’Ekiti State is entitled to its own policies and it is not under any obligation to accept Federal Government policies, especially the TSA that is already robed in the garment of fraud. I therefore wish to state categorically that Ekiti State is not interested in the TSA policy and since the state is not interested, I, as the custodian of the popular mandate of the entire people of the state will not attend any meeting called by the Federal Government on the TSA.
“TSA is also meant to enrich some individuals for doing virtually nothing and that can be seen from the discovery of N25 billion that already accrued to just a single company in one month. How can the Federal Government justify a transaction in which a single company gets one percent, amounting to N25 billion in one month?
“Shouldn’t the one per cent commission have been negotiated downward to like 0.1 percent which would have reduced the N25 billion to N2.5 billion? Even manufacturing companies, with thousands of employees don’t make N25 billion profit in one month.’’
The Senate had last Thursday decided to launch an investigation into allegations of corruption in the management of the TSA.
Senator Dino Melaye on the floor of the Red Chambers on Wednesday moved a motion that a probe of the operations of Remita be probed.
Melaye had alleged that Remita was making N25billion in one day in mopping up about N2.5 trillion on the loose.
According to him, “financial scavengers and economic cankerworms” were trying to sabotage the anti-corruption war of President Muhammadu Buhari by mismanaging the TSA.