Oyindamola Olofinlua

Law School

Background:

The Nigerian Law School was set up by the Federal Government of Nigeria in 1962 to provide a Nigerian legal education to foreign-trained lawyers, and to provide practical training for aspiring Legal Practitioners in Nigeria. Until the school was established, legal practitioners in Nigeria had received the requisite training in England and had been called to the English Bar.

Since its creation, over 70,000 students have graduated from the Nigerian Law School as anyone who has obtained a University degree in law and wants to practice as lawyers in Nigeria must pass through the Law School. The Council of Legal Education which runs the Nigeria Law School issues certificates to students who passes the Bar examinations after which the students are then called to the Bar.

The Pre-TSA Challenge:

To provide quality legal education to its teeming students, the Council of Legal education was required to implement process to meet the payments and collection requirements of the Law School. Before the advent of TSA, the six Law school campuses across the nation implemented Internet Banking to consummate payment transactions and appointed designated banks to oversee its collections initiative. This process though firmly entrenched created the following challenges:

Limited Availability of Channel: Another point of concern for students was they could pay for their school fees ONLY when the banks are opened. This experience limited the earning capability of the school while also deeply constraining the students to Banks operations timeline
Report Generation: Before TSA, the law school was heavily constrained as it could not generate detailed report of revenues collected along different revenue heads. These posed reconciliation and audit challenges as report and analysis had to be manually matched again revenue reports generated from the banks.
Payment Channels Limitation: Finally the channel of payments available to students was limiting as students could only make payment at the branches of designated banks. This experience subjected payers to the operational timeline of banks as payment couldn’t be executed during the weekends, Public holidays or even after banking hours.
Payment Monitoring: Another current process which posed a challenge for the Law school was the manual monitoring of payment. All 6 schools across the country previously had to monitor their collections status manually to know the status of their financial position. This limited their decisive capacity as they were not armed with required information to take timely decision.
Reconciliations: From the forgoing, reconciliation became cumbersome as the school is required to match receipt issued with revenues collected manually. The cumbersome process was time consuming and error strewed
Payment Verifications: Additionally, payment verification was manually executed as the School previously verified each payment via copies of tellers which the students submit for receipt. This process was susceptible to error and sabotage as students could bring fake tellers as payment evidence
Payment Mode: Prospective students could only make payments to the NLS mainly via cash payments and Cheques at designated banks. Only designated banks allowsprospective student pay school fees

The TSA Solution and Benefits

It was clear that the Law school needed something more: a more robust solution that allows for more control of revenues while still flexible enough to give ease to payers

Upon the directive of the president that all government parastatal should comply with the full implementation of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) policy, the Council of Legal Education engaged the CBN payment gateway team- Remita, as part of its desire to comply with Mr. President’s directive. It was thus a pleasant surprise that Remita completely addressed previously identified concerns of the Nigerian Law School in the following ways:

• Unrestricted Transaction Time: With the enabling of TSA ePayment functionality, students are now able to make payment anywhere and at any time without the prior restrictions of associated with bank closures, weekend or public holiday breaks. This has been a major breakthrough for students as convenience and ease associated with their payments have exponentially increased. Also, revenue loss due to payment constrains suffered by students are now a thing of the past.

• Detailed Report: Since adopting TSA, perhaps the biggest benefit to the Finance & Account team is the versatility of report available in the delivery of their job. Previously challenging exercise has become a straightforward experience as detailed and accurate reports are now easily available through TSA.

• Extended Payment Channels: one of the leading benefits of the TSA implementation is the increase of payment channels available to payers. Students are now able to make payments to the Law School via ANY branch of all commercial banks in Nigeria, Internet Banking Sites of chosen Banks, Over 500 Micro Finance Banks, Debit/Credit Card, Designated POS, Mobile Wallet, Remita portal and designated payment portal of the Nigerian Law School. The convenience

• Automated Monitoring of Payment: Another benefit of current process which posed a challenge for the Law school was the manual monitoring of payment. All 6 schools across the country previously had to monitor their collections status manually to know the status of their financial position. This limited their decisive capacity as they were not armed with required information to take timely decision

• Reconciliations: TSA has virtually eliminated reconciliation challenges experienced in the past as payment evidences are now made via a reference code that captures transaction details for easy and error-free reconciliations.

• .Automated Payment Verification: TSA eliminated the possibility of fraud occasioned by the presentation of fake teller through the automated verification of payment available on the payment gateway. Now, fees payments could only be made after the generation of a unique reference code that capture details of each payments with the implementation of TSA, the Law School now automatically verifies payments made by students.

• ePayment Enabler: Unlike previous process that restricted prospective payers to mainly pay via Cash or Cheques at designated bank branch, the TSA payment gateway-Remita (which allows payers to still either pay with cash as previously done or via ePayment channels like Credit/Debit Cards, Internet Banking, etc.) now also enables the Council to plug into the ePayment initiative of the federal government with its accompanying benefits. Payers are able to pay more easily and avert well known challenges associated with carrying cash (i.e. Threat of robbery attack, Loss of damage of cash etc.).

The Results: Simplicity | Versatility | Ease

“TSA has brought convenience; it has made our processes easier for us. I will recommend the payment Gateway-Remita even for individual use as I have enrolled to use myself.  Before TSA, we had some problems with report generation, we therefore wanted a solution that could generate detailed report about collection of our revenues – particularly under specific revenue heads and our banks could provide that. Luckily the coming of TSA has been able to solve that for us because we can now generate report for the specific type of revenue items that we have in very manner. The versatility of the report is fantastic”

Indeed, we can now easily track payments to vendors and collections from students an experience which gives us clearer visibility to our operation-giving us better cash management”

Mr. Moses Gbishe, Director, Finance & Accounts

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