Fayose: PMB using TSA to fund Kogi, Bayesla polls

Ayodele Fayose, governor of Ekiti state, has accused President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC) of “siphoning money” from the Treasury Single Account (TSA) to fund the forthcoming governorship elections in Kogi and Bayelsa states.

He therefore said he would not honour an invitation from the federal government on a meeting with state governors to discuss the TSA.

Speaking through Lere Olayinka, his special assistant on public communications and new media, who released a statement on Sunday, Fayose said “categorically” that the Ekiti state government was not interested in the TSA policy, as it ‘s “a fraud against Nigeria and its people”.

“The federal government should rather remove the veil on the face of REMITA so that Nigerians can know the real owners, through whom the All Progressives Congress (APC) is siphoning Nigeria money to fund Kogi and Bayelsa States governorship election,” he said.

“From all intent and purposes, this TSA policy is aimed at recouping money spent on the last general elections by the APC, as well as raise money for future elections, especially the Kogi and Bayelsa States gubernatorial poll.

“It 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? In this economic situation that Nigeria is, shouldn’t the one percent 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. Therefore, what Nigerians are expecting from the Federal Government is explanation on the alleged N25 billion naira scam already associated with the operation of the TSA, instead of calling State Governors to a meeting that is aimed at imposing the TSA policy on the States.”

Maintaining that he will not attend the federal government’s meeting with state governors on the TSA, Fayose said the federal government could not force its policies on states, which are federating units.

“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,” he said.

“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.”

In August, Buhari had issued an order for all government agencies and institutions to pay all federal government revenues into TSA or designated accounts operated in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

However, last week, Dino Melaye, an APC senator representing Kogi west, raised the alarm over possible corruption in the management of the account, saying “some financial scavengers and economic cankerworms” ‎were trying to sabotage the anti-corruption war of the president by mismanaging the TSA.

In a motion co-sponsored by 35 senators, Melaye observed that “in the course of the operations of the TSA, the federal government on September 15 mopped up the sum of N2.5 trillion through its e-collection agent, Remita, which charges one percent of all money passing through it, the implication‎ of which one percent of the N2.5tr mopped up on September 15 alone amounted to N25bn largesse to Remita for doing nothing”.

He argued that the appointment of Remita as an agent for the operations of the TSA negated and contravened Section 162 (1) of the 1999 constitution, saying that CBN was the sole institution mandated to collect and disburse money on behalf of the federal government.

The senate then ordered its committee on finance, banking, other financial institutions and ‎public account to carry out a “holistic investigation” on the management of the account.