By Matthew Denis
The newly elected Chairman, Institute of Chartered Accountants of
Nigeria (ICAN) Ilorin and Kwara Districts branch, Mr. Mohammed Baba
Ibrahim has called on both state and local tiers of government to
embrace global practice in financial transactions.
The Chairman made the call in an interview with Pilot Business in
Ilorin at the weekend.
He stressed the need for the two tiers of government to adopt the use
of remitters for their transactions.
” The Federal Government has long introduced the usage of remitters
for payment, transactions which is already online.
“The tax payer or contractor pays his money online through the
remitters into Federal Government accounts, so there is no cash
payment again, every transaction is cashless for accountability.”
According to him, most of the state and local governments are yet to
introduce the remitters system thereby making their financial
transactions very slow and burdensome.
He said, “We have revenue agencies in the various states they need
to introduce remitters like the Kwara Internal Revenue Service
(KWIRS). Their customers needs to be paying their taxes through
remitters into their accounts to make it convenient for them.
“This remitters system will enhance and speed the financial
transactions of various states and guarantee accountability.
Ibrahim noted that the entrenchment of cashless policy in the third
tier of government is still at low pace considering the fact that some
of the council area don’t have commercial banks as a result of
security challenges.
He said ” The problem we have is that’s most of the third tiers of
government don’t even have commercial banks in their various
headquarters thereby posing a major problem.
” The Central Bank of Nigeria in collaboration with various
stakeholders need to collaborate to ensure functional microfinance
banks, Point of Sales (POS), and other means of getting the financial
transactions closer to people at the grassroots,” he added.
