The Accountant-General of the Federation, Mr. Ibrahim Dankwambo, disclosed this in Abuja on Wednesday at a one-day workshop on e-payment with the Directors of Finance and Accounts in the Ministries, Departments and Agencies.
In the place of cash and cheque payments, the Federal Government has put in place a process for the implementation of e-payment system.
The AGF office had on October 22, 2008 issued a treasury circular making it mandatory for agencies of government to begin implementation of the e-payment system. This was followed by detailed implementation guidelines for e-payment from all funds of the Federal Government.
Dankwambo said, “In order to implement the presidential directive on e-payment, my office immediately commenced to work out the modalities for easy implementation in collaboration with the Central Bank of Nigeria, MDAs and commercial banks.
“The concept of e-payment, which is a subset of e-government, is not new in Nigeria because it is similar to the use of ATM cards, smart cards, which are other versions of e-payment.”
He added, “Basically, the objective of e-payment is to facilitate payment from one end to another through the medium of computer without manual intervention of beyond imputing the payment data.
“I went further and signed a letter to the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria to direct all commercial banks to dishonour all cheques issued and dated January 1, 2009 as a demonstration of the commitment of the Federal Government in this regard.”
The AGF said since the commencement of the new payment regime, MDAs had been confused about proper implementation and thus held a meeting to resolve the grey areas.
According to Dankwambo, the new payment system will reduce human interface in payment of jobs executed for government and thereby introduce transparency. He added that monies paid could be traced and reviewed.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Everest Amaefule
Quelle/Source: The Punch, 29.01.2009
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