More than 100 Federal Government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) were said to be falling over themselves a couple of days ago to beat the Federal Government deadline given to them to key into the Treasury Single Account (TSA) regime with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) as was ordered by President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration recently. As a consequence of the leeway to corruption numerous accounts operated by MDAs offered to public sector crooks out to shortchange the nation, President Muhammadu Buhari, in the first week of August this year, ordered all MDAs to commence payments of all government revenues, incomes and other receipts into the TSA to promote transparency in public funds’ management and in compliance with Sections 80 and 162 of the 1999 Constitution (as altered).
Some MDAs, however, mumbled their apprehensions that the measure would adversely affect their operations instead of enhancing their efficiency and performance. This eventually necessitated, about two weeks after the TSA order was given, a clarification by the Accountant-General of the Federation (AGF), Ahmed Idris, that the directive was not punitive. “The introduction of the TSA is not a punitive measure targeted at any government establishment, or an attempt to jeopardize the peace and stability of the university system… It is part of the reforms being introduced by this administration to institutionalize a more effective and transparent management of public finances in the country”, Idris said. The lacklustre response of MDAs to the order, however, compelled the FG, through a circular issued to all MDAs by the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mr. Danladi Kifasi, to peg Tuesday, September 15, 2015 as the last day for compliance, “to avoid sanctions”.
If reports of the last minute rush of MDAs to comply are anything to go by, it may then be safely stated that not only are the MDAs comfortable with the less than honest and accountability chaos their maintenance of innumerable bank accounts permit, they want the fraud to persist. We are not discountenancing the intense pressure coming from the banking sector to frustrate the TSA regime, since little or no huge financial fraud can be perpetrated against the nation by MDAs without the connivance of complicit banks. But patriotism, the mood of the nation politically and its economic travails presently demand that the interest of the nation and all citizens be served first before that of parochial enclaves.
Indeed, had the FG not insisted that there was no going back on the September 15, 2015 deadline for all MDAs and the general public to comply with the TSA policy, it is not unlikely that most MDAs, especially the revenue generating ones that exercise enormous powers over their funds, would still be living in their fool’s paradise of “it is business as usual”.
Special note must be taken of the fact that the Kaduna State Government opted on its own to commence implementation of the TSA initiative last September 1, following a directive Governor Nasir El-Rufai gave at a meeting with officials of all banks holding the state government’s many revenue and expenditure accounts. In just a matter of days, however, reports indicated that with the adoption of the TSA, Kaduna State had traced and uncovered N4 billion stashed in 470 different accounts in 23 commercial banks. Speaking through Kaduna State’s Deputy Governor, Barnabas Bala, El-Rufai said: “With the (TSA) system, we have been able to trace and discover the sum of N4bn in different account names in 23 banks”. If this can be the case in one state within so short a time, the amount the FG would rake in with TSA can at best be unimaginable.
From the FG’s clarification on the TSA, it is supposed to be a unified structure of bank accounts enabling consolidation and optimal utilization of government’s cash resources. It is a bank account or a set of linked bank accounts through which government transacts all its receipts and payments and gets consolidated view of its cash position at any given time. The TSA aims at creating a single pool where all government’s revenue receipts would be kept in one account, to make it possible for the FG to know the state of all the accounts at a glance. Therefore, if previous public accounting systems fragmented accounts for government revenues, incomes and receipts, and in the process encouraged the loss or leakages of legitimate income meant for the Federation Account, the FG should not spare the rod in dealing with recalcitrant heads of MDAs who have fallen so much in-love with the past locust regime of waste to the extent that they now view the TSA initiative as a bitter pill.
