Today, hardly anyone is in doubt that the Treasury Single Account (TSA) is the most impact fiscal initiative of any government that has ever ruled Nigeria. At the federal level and for a number of forward-thinking states that have implemented it to the letter, the TSA has been instrumental in improving accountability, boosting revenue collection and giving the government a firm control over its spending.
Prior to its full implementation about three years ago, our major challenge as a nation was mostly traced to the fundamental lack of systems capable of safeguarding against leakages, corruption and financial opaqueness down to the basest level – the grassroots.
However, since the federal government mandated all its ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) to fully comply with the TSA policy by closing all accounts they operated and scattered across the country, many of which had become the funnels of blatant looting of public funds, it has become easier to trace all government funds stashed away in commercial banks to yield interest. It also stopped the government from going cap in hand to borrow its own money time and time again!
Not only were over twenty thousand bank accounts closed across Nigeria; for the first time in our history, the all-powerful Federal Government of Nigeria had a timely insight of its finances, knowing how much each MDA had in its coffers per time and how much government had in the treasury in total.
These capabilities were achieved without hindering the works and processes of each MDA. The era of applying for bank statements from different bank branches from time to time to know its true financial position also ended.
The federal government saves about N4 billion monthly in bank charges and as at March 2018 had recorded a total inflow of 8.9 trillion naira. It is the first time this is happening in Nigeria.
Since commencement, the TSA in Nigeria has run efficiently on a 100 per cent made in Nigeria software called Remita. When foreign solutions failed to deliver on the TSA requirement, and its implementation was going to be postponed by another two years,
Remita made it work. In spite of the initial the hogwash allegation made by Senator Dino Melaye, which has now been proven to be completely false, the success of Nigeria’s TSA with the aid of Remita has become a reference point for other countries.
Now, Remita is in fact already being exported to other African countries. That is regardless of recent news that the federal government had failed to pay for the service of its developers, SystemSpecs for more than two years, and had compelled SystemSpecs to return an initial payment during a baseless uproar.
With the progress made so far, one is not surprised that the wide acclaims for the Treasury Single Account initiative has grown in leaps and bounds of acceptability by various stakeholders in Africa.
Even at state and local government levels, it has become a non-negotiable policy for governments hoping to entrench accountability and improve operational efficiency. In a recent statement credited to Boboi Kaigama, President of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) and governorship aspirant in Taraba State, in reference to how Edo state had been able to increase workers’ minimum wage, had said: “Oshiomhole increased the minimum wage in Edo. Where did he get the money from? It is a matter of efficient management of resources. We must have the Treasury Single Account in Taraba state.”
Indeed, in Edo, Gombe, Kano, Zamfara, Kogi, Plateau, Niger, Benue, Nasarawa, Kaduna and other states across the country where TSA has been introduced and is fully run by Remita, the difference has become even clearer.
Some of such benefits include the increase in their internally generated revenue and the capability to make more intelligent financial decisions. But these states are not the only ones that should experience this transformation. The government of Taraba and other states where TSA is yet to be implemented must make it one of their top priorities.
Also, as a matter of urgency, TSA should not be limited to states alone but be extended to local governments. If local and state governments’ finances are mandated to be managed in more transparent manners, governments at these levels would sit tight and no longer expect to feed off allocations from the federal government’s ‘plates’.
This would not only assist Nigeria to put in place proper finance management systems down to the grassroots, it would also help government at all levels to look inward and arrive at various productive ways to engender greater economic productivity.
