The Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has declared that the funds that have accrued to the Treasury Single Account (TSA) remain intact, and challenged anyone who has any facts and figure to the contrary to make such information public.
In a statement in Abuja on Tuesday, the Minister stressed that less than 2trn Naira has accrued to the TSA; as a result of which the one per cent charge on the amount cannot be 25bn Naira.
He said that apart from the resort to personal insults in the most un-dignifying statement ever credited to any state Governor in Nigeria, nowhere in his statement did Gov. Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State controvert the facts stated by the federal authorities concerning the TSA.
The Minister continued: ''For the sake of Nigerians at home and in the Diaspora who have been following the TSA debate, we hereby restate the facts:
- The TSA deal was initiated by the immediate past administration but only enjoyed a new lease of life under the Administration of President Muhammadu Buhari because of his sterling leadership
qualities of accountability, transparency, uprightness and respect for the rule of law.
- Any agreement on the TSA charges was reached long before the present Administration assumed office.
- Even if the agreement on the charges is one per cent, it could not have amounted to 25 billion Naira because the total amount of money that has accrued to the TSA is less than 2 trillion Naira.
- Even if one per cent was agreed as charges, whatever accrues therefrom was meant to be shared among the CBN, Systemspecs (the owner of the Remita software) and the commercial banks, hence no single company could have collected 25 billion Naira as charges
- As at the time the controversy over the TSA broke, the total amount of money in the TSA was less than 800 billion Naira
- The TSA has neither been enveloped in any fraud nor has any money from the account been diverted.
The Senate's investigation of the TSA issue is within its oversight responsibilities and is never a confirmation that the TSA funds have been diverted or that indeed one single company has made 25 billion Naira as charges.”
He asserted that these being the issues, the federal government stands by them irrespective of any rabble-rousing and demeaning statement from any quarter.