Acting Accountant General under fire over ‘unremitted’ charges

The Acting Accountant General of the Federation, Okolieboh Sylva has come under fire over alleged “unremitted” charges deducted from Remitta payment platform into the Federation Account.

The Acting Accountant General came under scrutiny when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Finance to defend the budget of the office on Friday.

Unable to provide satisfactory answers to questions raised by lawmakers about the disbursements and utilization of the billions of naira allegedly raised through the payment platform in the last 10 years, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, Solomon Olamilakan (APC, Lagos West) ordered full scale investigation to unravel the mystery surrounding the “unremitted” money.

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Okolieboh had explained that even though his office was in charge of the Remitta payment platform, the office did not receive any amount from the service charge which according to him was shared between the Central Bank of Nigeria, Commercial banks and the service provider, REMITTA.

The explanation did not sit well with the Olamilakan-led Senate Committee who found it “strange” that the Office of the Accountant General received nothing from the billions of money deducted even though the platform belonged to it.

The Senate panel subsequently ordered full probe into the matter and summoned the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria(CBN), Godwin Emefiele, the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation as well as the service provider, REMITTA to appear before it unfailingly on the 16th of November, 2022 to give explanations.

The Senate Committee also ordered the Okolieboh 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.

The Senate Committee said it decided to pay special attention on the books of the office of the Accountant General as a result of recent alleged corruption that characterized the tenure of the immediate past Accountant General, Ahmed Idris who is currently facing charges of embezzlement with the Economic and Financial Commission(EFCC).