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e-Payment will Minimize Fraud – Obaro

Published

16 years ago

January 18, 2010

John Obaro, managing director of SystemSpecs Limited

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John Obaro is managing director of SystemSpecs Limited, a thriving financial and human capital management software solutions company. He has had a distinguished IT management career and is regarded as one of the most respected personalities in the Nigerian IT industry. Obaro worked in the banking industry for 10 years before setting out to start up SystemsSpecs 18 years ago. He spoke to chike onwuegbuchi and funmi ilesanmi on issues in the e-payment space.

FG’ Directive on e-Payment
It was a very good move on the part of the government to embrace e-payment and that has given a good platform for the industry to grow, because government at the end of the day is the largest player. In the last one year, there have been experiences that move from extreme excitement to extreme frustration, so you have two clear groups in the industry today, those who are very excited about e-payment, and those who are very frustrated by e-payment.
The first challenge is that e-payment itself has not been properly defined, so you have people come up with anything different from a cheque leaf and call it e-payment. You have people put data on CDs and flash drives and send to their banks and call it e-payment. You have people send schedules to their banks and call it e-payment. You have people send attachments to e-mails, and send it to their banks and call it e-payment. Now, these clearly are not in anyway e-payment.
e-Payment is e-payment. e-Payment must be end to end electronic payment for transactions. The moment you have manually intervened, it is no longer e-payment. It is at the very best manual e-payment. Most of the people who have experienced frustration with “e-payment” are those who have been practicing moving schedules physically to the banks, they do not know what is happening to the payment, they send in diskettes of data manually to the banks, they do not know what is happening to the payment, they just wait. These people are bound to experience lots of frustration.
However, for true e-payment, organizations key in their transactions from the comfort of their offices themselves, it is transmitted to the banks, necessary accounts are debited and the counterparts credited. The organizations that sent these instructions are able to see on the screen of the computers on their desk the status of all instructions they have given. Therefore, any organization that cannot see their current and even historical transactions on the screen in front of them showing the status are not practicing e-payment.
In the last one year, we have some arms of government that are practicing e-payment and are enjoining the benefits and we have those who are struggling with manual processes.
Extent of MDAs Compliance with e-Payment
Let me put it this way, a number of the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) are doing true e-payment but a large number of them are still struggling with sending schedules to their banks. Part of the challenge is that a number of the MDAs probably did not get a proper understanding of what they were to do at the early stages; they just knew they were no longer allowed to write cheques. The next thing they did was to hand over their payment instructions to their banks in whatever form. So they just transferred the problem in an attempt not to flout government regulation and not knowing what next to do they just present cheques to banks or key in some things into a spreadsheet and send it by e-mail to their banks.
As the year started wearing on with the confusion and pressure on their operations, many of them started exploring better and more effective ways of addressing these issues and I can only see things getting better. Yes, there has been a move from fairly cumbersome ways of addressing issues into more efficient ways, especially as they see possibilities. Part of the initial challenge was that many people did not believe that these things were possible. They did not believe that it is possible to sit in your office, issue a debit instruction, your account is debited and your identified beneficiary will be credited. Many people did not believe it, did not understand it and it was therefore easier for them to just throw the schedules to the banks.
Directive on Cheque over N10 Million to go e-Payment
I think that is a very encouraging move from the Central Bank of Nigeria. I know it is inline with vision: 2020 of the federal government, which entails the economy to go electronic in terms of payments. Of course we have been advocating that, you no longer need a cheque leaf at all to carry out transactions. We have organizations today that carry out a good number of their transactions on Remita without touching cheque leaves. For now I would say in SystemSpecs for instance less than one to two percent of our transactions are issued on cheques. Why? We need to issue cash directly for some pressing transactions, other than that we are looking at a future where we do not need cheque leaf for anything, because if you want to pay a third party, you can press some buttons and the beneficiary gets credited.
The N10 million limit by the CBN, I feel is something that would encourage organizations to begin to look in the electronic direction.
My advice to organizations is that, they should avoid the temptation of having some transactions in the electronic form and another set of transactions in the traditional way of cheque writing because at the end of the day it may further compound their reconciliation challenges. You might as well seize the opportunity to move all your transactions to an e-payment platform so that you can have a full view of all your transactions.
I do not see the directive as a negative for any organization rather I see it as an opportunity for them to immediately go electronic. Really, what do you need? A laptop and an internet access is all that is needed to adopt electronic payment. I want to encourage organizations to see the CBN mandate as an opportunity to go fully electronic.              The challenge is that most of the banks are thinking only of their individual banks, therefore they have solutions that their customers can use to carry out e-payments with them.
In real life, most organizations have multiple bank accounts, so you find the challenge of an organization that wants to perform true e-payment log into the website of bank A and perform its transactions, then log out to log into the website of bank B, learn to navigate through the website of bank B, the way bank B wants it. Then they log out and need to remember their password for bank C to log into their website. All of these create confusion in the mind of the corporates. That is where a solution like Remita comes in. Remita presents one front to the organization, one password assess and transmits the instruction of the organization to the respective banks. That makes life easier for the corporates. On ones screen for instance, you can see your balances across all banks; if you have accounts in seven banks, with Remita you can see your balances on each of the seven banks on a screen, including your gross total. From the same screen, you can issue payment instructions; you can pay people within the same bank or in any other bank without having accounts in any of these other banks.
You can pay beneficiaries in other banks even in microfinance banks and mortgage institutions. At the same time you are able to see the status of all your transactions, the instructions you gave, you are able to know the ones that have been successfully paid, the one that has one challenge or another and you can immediately address those challenges. Perhaps if the account number was wrong or you do not have sufficient funds, you are able to track all of that yourself.
Bankers understand this, a number of bank customers are also beginning to understand this and that is why I foresee a bright future for the industry.
Depriving Banks of Certain Revenues
It is only a bank that wants to be short sighted that will not embrace e-payment. e-Payment is actually what you may call a major efficiency platform for bankers. Take for instance under the manual system, you issue a cheque to someone, that person goes to his bank, he fills a teller form, he queues up before he can pay in the cheque. The cashier collects the cheque, pass it through some internal processes before it is keyed into their computer system. It then goes through clearing which will be monitored while going through the two to three days clearing. All of these takes resources from the bank, not just a cheque but you can imagine all the banking halls filled up with people who are trying to pay in their cheque leaves.
Whereas with an electronic payment platform, once banks have their IT infrastructure well in place, they just sit back and watch these transactions happen without manual interventions. You can see that this is a major efficiency platform for the banks. Apart from that, the risks of fraud get minimized because it is when you have a lot of manual human interventions that opportunities for fraud exist. With the electronic platform the bank gets more efficient and the chances of fraud are minimized. I believe the banks are the winners at the end of the day.
I do not see any forward looking bank opposing e-payment because they see it as a loss of revenue. They still continue to charge COT and other agreed charges with the banks.
Software Company of the Year Award
I must say it is a very special award to us at SystemSpecs. Special in the sense that in our 18 years of operation we have won different awards both nationally and internationally but this is the first time we have an award by our colleagues in the same industry, that is Nigeria Computer Society (NCS). When your colleagues in the same industry conduct a survey and come up with an award recognizing you, that gives a very exciting feeling. We feel humbled by the award and we feel challenged at the same time. Challenged in the sense that you have an award by people who know, by people who understand and you now have to remain on top of the game; you have to improve your standards and remember at all times that your products are a showcase for the industry. You therefore have to do everything to keep the integrity of the award at all times.
Areas of Operation
When we started at about 18 years ago, we partnered with a then UK firm now called Info and has actually been bought over by a US company. We partnered with the company for the deployment of Sun Systems, one of the most popular accounting software worldwide. We started representing them in Nigeria, we moved into oil and gas, manufacturing and other sectors of the economy. After a while, we then moved on to develop our solution for payroll and human resources. It has been a very interesting experience. A few years ago, we ventured into the e-payment space, we started out from saying when people finished running their payroll, they should be able to effect payments directly from their offices; and that was how we started Remita. On our stable today, we have Sun Systems from Info, we have Human Manager which is a payroll and human resource management solution and then we have Remita which is an electronic payment platform.
Mobile Money
People have defined it variously, it is the extent that you use a mobile phone to effect payment, people want to see that as mobile payment which is still part of the what we are saying. On Remita for instance, you can effect your approvals via your mobile phones so you can effect payments to vendors from the mobile phone. I also foresee a future for that even though for now we are focusing more on corporates but as time goes we will also be looking at individuals who would want to carry their mobile phones and it is as good as carrying cash in hand.
Future of e-Payment in Nigeria
I see a bright future for e-payment in Nigeria. What many people may not realize is that Nigeria is currently ahead in the area of corporate e-payment. Nigeria is currently ahead of quite a number of countries including a number of western nations. If we get it right the way we are doing it, it will become a very exportable product even to other countries. It increases the velocity of money that of course would immediately have an impact on our economic activities because with money moving around everybody gets a piece of the action.

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Leo Stan Ekeh: A “Rare Avis”, an Unconquerable Entrepreneur

Published

7 hours ago

December 22, 2025

Ugo Onwuaso

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By Tim Akano

Leo Stan Ekeh (LSE) is an extraordinary human being. He is extremely hardworking, hugely brave, and massively intelligent. He is a shrewd businessman but with a cathedral-size heart of butterfly

Leo Stan Ekeh

I’m a product of LSE’s generosity. But not only me, I am close enough to know. We are uncountable.

I was always with him after office hours in his office twenty years ago when he was constructing a church in his place of birth. He was so committed to details and beauty that when the church was roofed and he went for inspection and discovered some misalignment, he instructed the contractor to remove the roof and redo it, without minding the extra cost coming from his pocket.

There was this physically challenged fellow that LSE bought a car for, including a driver to make life easier for her.

During one of his birthday celebrations, he told me, Tim, I am not inviting my friends for any birthday party this year, all the money I would have used in buying expensive wine, I am donating everything to charity

LSE & I

He actually looked for me when I started New Horizons. He read my interview in the Vanguard news paper and asked his staff to look for me.

Prayer:
May each of us receive a telephone call before the end of 2025 that will change our life’s trajectory for good for ever in Jesus name, Amen.

I did.!

Our conversation on that fateful Friday went like this:

LSE: Tim, I read your interview in the newspaper. I would like us to meet.

Tim: You are our LEADER in the Technology ecosystem, Sir.
I can come to your house tomorrow Saturday morning for a breakfast.

LSE: Tim, that’s good, I will be expecting you by 8am tomorrow in my house.

By 8am the following day, I was in his massive, intimidating house.
As I entered the premises I said a simple prayer: The God Almighty who is blessing LSE, please Daddy God be kind to me also in my entrepreneurship journey Amen.

That day the breakfast meeting went well. He wanted to see the man behind the ambitious vision of transforming the ICT education in Nigeria.

He saw tomorrow!

1 LSE First Intervention: Two years after I started my company, New Horizons, I ran out of cash, even to pay salary was a prayer item every 30th of the month. That was May, 2007 it remained just 72 hours for Heaven to fall on my head, metaphorically speaking, that is!

I needed N10M to stop HEAVEN FROM CRASHING ON MY HEAD!
Banks in Nigeria are irrelevant to Start-ups, except and until you START WALKING, Banks will not come to your assistance in Nigeria.
It is O.Y.O (On Your Own) for every Start-up. If you don’t have God 100% on your side, don’t dabble into entrepreneurship in Nigeria!

This is why over 80% of Start-ups failed in Nigeria. In America, it is about 50%.

LSE was in Abuja on this particular Thursday. I called him and requested to see him. He told me to come.

Our conversation went like this:

LSE: Tim, I know you are keeping well.

Tim: My chairman, I am strong in faith, but in reality, heaven is hot on my side o! I need help, Chairman.

LSE: What is the matter, Tim?
Tim: I need N10M soft loan to keep afloat. It is urgent, critical and time- bound.

LSE ok, Tim, see me on Monday (that meeting took place on a Thursday).

Tim: My chairman, I am not exaggerating the criticality of my situation. by Monday it would be too late because Heaven would crash on my head in another 72 hours without the N10M! And it would be all over.

LSE adjusted himself, he breathed in , he looked me straight in the eyes. I wouldn’t know what LSE saw in my eyes that day.

But he stood up, went to the inner room and he came out with his cheque book. He gave me an Access Bank cheque for N10M, which I later refunded 3 months later without interest.

I survived, heaven didn’t fall that day, glory be to God and thanks to LSE.

LSE intervention 2:

This time we had grown, having survived the ABIKU YEARS (The first 5 years of Start-up are the ABIKU YEARS, years of premature, sudden death. If you survive the first 5 years, your chances of living to celebrate your 20 years in business are bright). We did, all gratitude to God.

I got a business that required huge capital to execute- very big money, which was beyond my capacity.

I went to my destiny- helper again. He is never tired of seeing me. He picks my calls on the first ring. But I don’t abuse the access too. No frivolous conversations. No irrelevant calls. Every call is about matter and mission critical

This particular day LSE was looking extremely tired, having over flogged his body.

He told me he had been sleeping in the office for about 3 days, busy putting his papers together to enable him close a massive business deal, which he eventually got, after fighting like a lion whose cub was taken by a lone leopard!

LSE overwhelmed every opposition. He fought like Mohammed Alli, the world’s greatest boxer of all time. LSE won.
And that changed everything for him, too, forever. Fortune favours the Brave

Our conversation that day went like this:

LSE: Tim, congrats you are doing well, I can see. Indeed I instructed all my staff to make sure they read any article you published (“I felt flattered”).

Tim: Chairman, I need your help, KONGA is not ready to give me the products I needed on credit and I don’t have cash to pay and the client will not pay me until after 9 months.

Tough one, indeed.

LSE: Tim, I will be honest with you, there is no way KONGA would give you products worth N500M (10 years ago money!) on credit.

Indeed, we held a meeting on Monday over your matter, the resolution of the Zinox Group is that you must look for cash before you can get the products. Let me tell you, my staff made me to sign-off on our resolution that as the Chairman of Zinox , I, LSE will not go behind to do the opposite of what we all agreed to, and I signed. Tim, I am sorry, my hands are tied!

As of that time, some of the young people LSE helped disappointed him badly. So bad, some souls are ungrateful.

Tim: Chairman, I know some of the people you helped even went to the extent of wrongfully blackmailing you in the media. I know that for a fact.

But Chairman, I am different. I am Tim Akano, I won’t disappoint you.
I will remain eternally grateful if you can still think out- of -the box and help me out.

I added: Chairman, you recall you were the one who looked for me that you would give me a helping hand in life.
I think my last statement touched him.
LSE Tim, I will give you my personal cheque. Here is the cheque for you, take it to KONGA and pay for your goods to meet your deadline.

Tim On getting to KONGA, from my steps and tone, the staff knew something positive had happened.
I confidently presented my cheque to Loretta & Co, the lady managing our account in KONGA then
They were shell shocked that God pulled it through for me another time, using Leo Stan Ekeh.

There were many more positive interventions, which I will reserve for my memoir.

Lessons: The reason behind the rise and rise of Leo Stan Ekeh (LSE) has to do partly because of his massive generosity, most of them are done silently.
Yes, LSE is a shrewd businessman, but he has a heart of a butterfly.

2 LSE is unconquerable and himself and his lineage will remain so because of several lives he has impacted positively

3 We are all products of people’s generosity. No one is a self-made man. In my own corner, through the TIM AKANO FOUNDATION, I am giving back in thousands folds all the kindness I am enjoying from people like LSE & others. I’m not withholding any kindness from people who need it when it’s within my capacity. God saw my heart, too, that when he must have helped me to stand, I will light thousands of candles.

It was William Shakespeare who admonished his followers to tell him all the good things they wanted to tell him while he was still alive because tributes written in beautiful prose means nothing to a dead person.

I congratulate LSE children, they have a great father in and his legendary generosity will always speak for them up to the 4th generation., as the Holy Bible said. LSE children should be proud of their father, he is a Lion, an Eagle and a butterfly, (LEB) all together at the same time.

@LSE: Sir, if you manage to read this short public appreciation, which I was inspired to write in a wedding event (the couple is taking over one hour to come out, instead of joining people who are anxious, I decided to use my idle time to pay you this tribute today), I want you to feel proud of yourself; what you have achieved will take an average person 10 lifetimes to achieve.

Your positive numerous interventions in my entrepreneurship journey have germinated and I am also touching lives- like you- in thousands across Africa, not only in Nigeria, especially with regards to Youth Empowerment.

I am eternally grateful, my chairman, my destiny-helper.

My prayer for you my Chairman, LSE: The Lion, the Eagle, the Butterfly (LEB) is for God to keep you continuously in sound, divine health, peace and happiness- that you will still remain strong at 120 years of age like the Biblical Moses who miraculously escaped physical depreciation in his eyes, strength and mental magnitude.🙏

Gratitude!
Gratitude!!
Gratitude!!!

[email protected]

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NITDA Wins Triple SERVICOM Honours for Citizen-Centred Service Delivery

Published

7 hours ago

December 22, 2025

Ugo Onwuaso

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National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has clinched three prestigious Service Compact with All Nigerians (SERVICOM) awards at the annual Ministry, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) Awards ceremony, earning acclaim for its outstanding citizen-centred service delivery.

NITDA

The honours spotlight NITDA’s leadership in digital transformation and efficient public service, as evaluated by SERVICOM on key benchmarks of timeliness, transparency, and customer satisfaction.

NITDA Director General, Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, received a personal commendation plaque during the event, recognising his unwavering support and commitment to prioritising citizens in agency operations.

The agency also secured a Special Recognition Award from the SERVICOM Office, celebrating its sustained initiatives to bridge government and citizens through high-quality service delivery.

In a further mark of excellence, NITDA was named the 2nd Best Performing Public Service Unit (PSU) Team B within the competitive MDAs category.

SERVICOM Framework Drives Public Service Reforms

SERVICOM, established to enhance service quality across Nigerian public institutions, assesses MDAs based on rigorous standards that ensure responsiveness to public needs.

NITDA’s triple honours reflect its strategic focus on leveraging technology to streamline services, foster accountability, and promote inclusive digital governance.

The awards align with broader federal efforts to reposition public service delivery amid Nigeria’s push for digital economy growth.

NITDA’s Digital Leadership Under Spotlight
Since its establishment, NITDA has spearheaded national ICT policies, infrastructure development, and capacity building, positioning Nigeria as an emerging digital hub.

The agency’s SERVICOM success underscores effective implementation of the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (2020-2030), enhancing e-government services and citizen engagement.

Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi’s leadership has been pivotal in initiatives like the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, alongside partnerships driving broadband expansion and cybersecurity.

These recognitions come amid NITDA’s ongoing campaigns for data localisation, digital skills training, and startup ecosystem support.

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FCCPC Forces Ikeja Electric Into Compliance, Unseals Headquarters After Rights Breach

Published

7 hours ago

December 22, 2025

Ugo Onwuaso

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Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) has secured enforceable compliance from Ikeja Electric Plc, leading to the unsealing of the electricity distributor’s headquarters after regulatory intervention over consumer rights violations.

Ikeja Electric

The Commission had sealed the company’s headquarters on December 11, 2025, following its failure to comply with a directive of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) to unbundle a Maximum Demand account into 20 individual accounts for a customer who had remained without electricity for more than two and a half years.

Following the enforcement action, Ikeja Electric entered into a binding undertaking with the FCCPC, committing to resolve all consumer complaints referred to it by the Commission within agreed timelines.

The FCCPC warned that any breach of the undertaking would trigger renewed and escalated enforcement under the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act (FCCPA).

The Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the FCCPC, Mr. Tunji Bello, said the intervention underscores the Commission’s resolve to protect consumers and enforce regulatory decisions.

“Our responsibility is to ensure that consumers are treated fairly and that service providers comply with lawful decisions and directives. Enforcement is not an end in itself. Where compliance is achieved and credible commitments are made, the Commission will respond appropriately,” Bello said.

He added that the resolution reflects a firm but balanced regulatory approach.

“We intervene decisively where consumer harm persists, and we de-escalate where enforceable compliance is secured. What remains constant is our duty to protect consumers and uphold regulatory accountability,” he said.

The FCCPC said the outcome sends a clear signal that consumer rights violations will attract decisive regulatory action, while companies that demonstrate genuine compliance will receive proportionate responses.

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