In February 2025, Bento Africa, once one of Nigeria's best-known payroll platforms, shut down amid investigations by the Lagos Internal Revenue Service (LIRS) and the EFCC into taxes and pensions that clients say were collected but never remitted (as reported by TechCabal). The lesson for every Nigerian employer isn't "that vendor was bad." It's structural: when a third party holds your statutory money on the way to the authorities, their failure becomes your liability. The tax office doesn't pursue your vendor for unremitted PAYE. It pursues you.
This isn't a sales page. It's the due-diligence piece we wish every SME had read in 2024, the timeline, the structural failure mode, and five questions to put to any payroll vendor, including us.
What happened: the timeline
Pieced together primarily from TechCabal's reporting:
- 2019, Bento is founded, and grows into a marquee name in Nigerian payroll, at its peak counting some of tech's biggest employers among its clients.
- 2024, major clients quietly leave, including Moniepoint, Paystack, Kobo360 and Bamboo. Client exits at this scale are the earliest public signal in the whole story.
- 2023–24, logistics firm Fuelmetrics alleges roughly ₦50 million in taxes and pensions deducted from staff salaries was never remitted to the authorities (per TechCabal's reporting of the allegation).
- 27 January 2025, TechCabal reports that LIRS and the EFCC are investigating Bento over unremitted client taxes and pension contributions.
- End of January 2025, CEO Ebun Okubanjo resigns.
- ~10 February 2025, after tech-team layoffs, Bento shuts down operations.
For affected employers, the aftermath was brutal in a specific way: money had left their accounts, deductions appeared on their employees' payslips, and yet, where remittances hadn't landed, the legal debt to LIRS and the pension regulators still sat with the employer. Some companies effectively faced paying the same statutory obligations twice, plus penalties and interest. (If you're a former Bento customer still untangling this, start with our guide to Bento alternatives in Nigeria.)
The structural lesson: custody is the failure mode
It's tempting to file Bento under "bad management" and move on. But the design deserves more attention than the personalities.
The dangerous pattern is third-party custody of statutory money: you hand PAYE, pension and NHF amounts to a vendor, and the vendor promises to pass them to the authorities. In that window, days, weeks, or in the worst cases months, your compliance depends entirely on the vendor's solvency, controls and honesty. You typically can't see the money. You often can't easily verify each remittance landed. And crucially:
- The liability never transfers. Under Nigerian law, the employer owes the PAYE and pension obligations. A vendor's failure to remit doesn't extinguish your debt, it just delays your discovery of it, while penalties and interest accrue (see PAYE remittance deadlines and penalties for what late remittance costs).
- Failure is silent. Salaries kept arriving at Bento clients. Nothing on a payslip distinguishes "remitted" from "deducted and held." The gap surfaces only when a tax audit, a pension statement, or a whistleblower exposes it.
- The float is a temptation. Statutory money sitting in a vendor's account is working capital someone under pressure can "borrow from." That risk exists at any custodial vendor, however well-intentioned, because the structure permits it.
Compare that with the boring alternative: your software calculates the amounts, and you pay the authorities directly, from your own account, with your own reference numbers. Less magical. Vastly more auditable. If a payment fails, you know that day, because you made it.
Five questions to ask any payroll vendor (including us)
Put these to every vendor on your shortlist, in writing, and keep the answers:
- "Who holds the statutory money between payroll and remittance?" If the answer involves the vendor's accounts, ask how long it sits there, under what safeguards, and whether it's segregated from operating funds. "We don't hold it, you pay the authorities directly" is the structurally safest answer.
- "Can I get proof of each remittance, per authority, per month?" You want receipts and reference numbers you could show LIRS or PenCom tomorrow, not a dashboard tick.
- "If you shut down next month, what exactly do I lose?" The honest answer should be "software and convenience", never "money in transit to the tax office."
- "Do you claim to auto-remit, and can you evidence it?" Treat automatic-remittance claims with real scrutiny. In our research across mainstream Nigerian payroll tools, the norm is that software calculates statutory amounts and the employer remits. A vendor claiming more should be able to demonstrate it end-to-end, not just assert it.
- "How do I verify my compliance independently of you?" Employees can request pension statements from their PFAs; employers can reconcile with LIRS/state-IRS records. A good vendor makes independent verification easier, not harder.
Any vendor irritated by these questions has answered them.
Where Kua stands, honestly
Since we're asking vendors to show their hands: Kua calculates your PAYE, pension and NHF and prepares the schedules, and you pay the authorities directly. Kua can facilitate that as a manual transfer (you choose the bank and enter the destination account), but it never holds your statutory money in the way that failed Bento's customers, and it never claims to remit or file on your behalf. Judged against the five questions above: no custody, direct payments you can evidence, and nothing about your compliance that depends on our balance sheet. That's a deliberate design choice, and after February 2025 we think it's the only responsible one to advertise.
The habits that protect you, whatever software you use
- Diarise the deadlines. PAYE to your state IRS by the 10th of the following month; pension to each RSA within 7 working days of paying salaries. (Full list with penalties.)
- Reconcile quarterly. Match your remittance receipts against payroll deductions. Ask two or three employees to pull their PFA statements, unremitted pension shows up there first.
- Keep the evidence trail. Receipts, reference numbers, filed returns. In an audit, "our vendor handled it" is not a defence; documents are.
- Watch vendor health. Big-name clients leaving quietly was Bento's loudest early warning. Founder churn, layoffs and delayed support are the others.
Choosing software after all this? Our best payroll software in Nigeria comparison applies exactly this custody-and-transparency lens to the whole market, and if you're starting from scratch, begin with how to run payroll in Nigeria.
FAQ
What happened to Bento Africa? It shut down around 10 February 2025, shortly after TechCabal reported an LIRS/EFCC investigation into unremitted client taxes and pensions and the CEO's resignation at the end of January 2025. Major clients including Moniepoint, Paystack, Kobo360 and Bamboo had already left during 2024.
If my payroll vendor fails to remit my PAYE, am I still liable? Yes. The statutory obligation sits with the employer. You may pursue the vendor for the loss, but the tax and pension authorities will look to you for the unpaid amounts, plus penalties and interest.
Does any Nigerian payroll software safely auto-remit taxes? Across the mainstream tools we've researched, the norm is calculate-and-you-remit. Any auto-remittance claim deserves the five questions above and documentary proof, the Bento episode is precisely why.
How do I check my past remittances actually landed? For PAYE, reconcile with your state IRS (Lagos: LIRS eTax) using your receipts; for pensions, employees can request RSA statements from their PFAs. Do this quarterly, not annually.
What should former Bento customers do now? Reconcile every month of deductions against actual remittances, engage LIRS/PenCom early about any gaps, keep all evidence of payments made to Bento, and pick a replacement with the custody question front and centre, see Bento alternatives in Nigeria.
Start free on Kua, pay 1% only when you fund payroll. Statutory amounts calculated for you; you pay the authorities directly, with nothing in anyone else's custody. Get started.