They stalled its full implementation because of their sudden realization that there was far more money to be made by keeping government revenues opaque. That way they could continue to dip their filthy fingers straight into all the unaccounted revenues of the myriad of government parastatals and MDAs. Pretty much the same way they suddenly realized that the use of card readers for the last election would significantly curtail their ability to rig.

It has been widely reported by the media and all the stakeholders (Systemspecs, CBN and the banks) that the N7.6B deducted to date as fees on a total of approximately N1.3 Trillion collection for government had been refunded on the instruction of the APC federal government. While the service cannot be expected to be free, the general opinion is that the 1% fee negotiated, agreed and signed by the outgone PDP federal government was exploitative given the volume of revenues now being remitted by these same government agencies which had before now been undeclared or just allowed to float in the banking system. The tragedy was that the same PDP government kept borrowing its own money via Treasury Bills and Bonds from the same banking system, paying mind boggling interest charges and crowding out the private sector from the loan market.

The likes of Fayose need to tarry and think before flying off the handle. I sympathize with the good people of Ekiti. Hiding under the rabble – rousing to justify not implementing TSA in Ekiti State is nothing but a design to continue the status quo and lack of transparency in accounting for government revenue. The result is of course intractable looting. What needs to be negotiated with the service providers are reasonable fees in the public interest.