1. No Ministry keeps accounts with commercial banks anymore after the Nation adopted TSA (Treasury Single Account).
2. MDAs have their various accounts with the CBN.
3. The OAGF processes payments based on the mandates on the accounts and the mandates of the MDAs as approved. They do not audit. It is the Auditor General that audits and CBN disburses payment/funds.
4. Since there are no accounts of MDAs in commercial banks, payments will be made to corporate or individual accounts depending on the type of payments.
5. In the case of the Humanitarian Affairs Ministry, most of the beneficiaries of their services and interventions do not hold nor operate bank accounts.
(Please refer to the time the NASS members and some Northern Governors were trying to explain how and why the region is heavily under-banked. Recall also Mallam El-Rufai’s explanation of people’s plight in the wake of Meffy’s Naira confiscation that about 60% or more of Kaduna residents do not have any banks close to them and some have to travel for hours to get to any bank as all their transactions are cash based).
6. The beneficiaries of the Ministry requires cash payment in most situations, hence the cash must move from the government (CBN) to private accounts first for onward distribution or disbursement – not a tidy or decent arrangement and that is where the CBN, finance ministry, and banks need to work out a solution to stem the huge corruption that is possible under this process.
7. In the case of the N44B the government official needed the President’s ascent to release those funds but from what we have read, this process or protocol was violated as it seems the President never approved the movement.
8. From verifiable document the Minister Got approval for the N500m+ the Minister needs and got the President’s assent, which may just be fine.
9. Our country has birthed many tech solutions and I believe we can also look into this and come up with a solution that will eliminate this crude means of distributing money as it leaves loopholes for corruption.
10. Even as we work on the solution, let us remember that the country with the cheapest and most sophisticated IT solutions in the world –India, still disburses money solutions like this via cash in many instances.
This does not in any way condone corrupt practices. We should fix our system to prevent such unreasonable loopholes.
