By G9ija
Members of Senate Committee on Finance on Thursday kicked over the failure of the Acting Accountant General of the Federation, Okolieboh Sylva, to remit charges deducted from Remitta payment platform into the Federation Account.
The Acting Accountant ran into trouble when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Finance on Friday.
Sylva was there to defend the budget of his office.
Following his failure to give convincing response, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, Senator Solomon Olamilakan Adeola (APC-Lagos West), ordered full scale investigation to unravel the mystery surrounding the “unremitted” money.
Sylva had explained that though his office was in charge of the Remitta payment platform, it did not receive any amount from the service charge, which, according to him, was shared by the Central Bank of Nigeria, commercial banks and the service provider, REMITTA.
The explanation did not sit well with the Adeola-led Senate Committee, which found it “strange” that the Office of the Accountant General received nothing from the billions of money deducted.
The Senate panel subsequently ordered full probe into the matter and summoned the Governor of the CBN, Godwin Emefiele, Office of the Accountant General of the Federation as well as the service provider, REMITTA, to appear before it unfailingly on November 16, 2022 to give explanations.
The Senate Committee also ordered the Acting Accountant General of the Federation to in the next one week provide details of all the bank accounts of the office till date, threatening to step down the Office’s budget defence if it failed to come up with the accounts.