AGF Asks MDAs to Furnish it with NUBAN Accounts

Joseph O. Otunla, accountant-general of the Federation (AGF), has directed all Federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to update their bank details with his office without further delay in line with the Nigerian Uniform Bank Account Number (NUBAN), policy that became effective since July 1.

A statement from his office recently said that failure to comply with the directives would attract  late payments of staff salaries to affected MDAs. 

Besides, the statement also said that if any staffer of the MDAs experienced any delay in the payment of his/her salary, should confirm that his/her bank details were accordingly updated and forwarded to IPPS.

It would be recalled that the Central Bank of Nigeria [CBN],  released the guidelines on NUBAN scheme in August, 2010 to achieve  uniform numbering structure among all deposit money  banks  in Nigeria within nine months.

NUBAN, according to the apex bank, “has great  potentials  to resolve  the observed problems with electronic payments in Nigeria as many  of them are related to specification of wrong beneficiary account numbers.”

The statement said that the initial deadline was June, 2011 but was extended by the CBN to June 1st, 2012 at the expiration of which it was further extended to July 1st, 2013.

Consequently,  the statement noted that NUBAN became fully operational on July1st, 2013 and all staff were supposed to have complied with it which observers said might lead to none crediting of some integrated Payroll Information Systems (IPPS) based civil servants’ salaries.

It said that prior to this date, MDAs on IPPS were adequately notified and requested to obtain the NUBAN from their staff and forward same to IPPS before the deadline. It appears that this request may not have been fully complied with by some  MDAs, which may lead to unnecessary delays in salary payments.