As the first tenure of President Muhammadu Buhari draws to a close, it is a perfect time to evaluate some of his most advertised achievements in office, one of which is the implementation of the Treasury Single Account (TSA), a policy recommended by the World Bank and partially kick-started by his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan. The TSA is a unified account maintained and managed by the Central Bank of Nigeria to plug leakages of funds in government-owned revenue-generating agencies.
In August 2015, few months after Buhari assumed office, he ordered that all fully funded organs of government like the Ministries, Departments, Agencies (MDAs) and Foreign Missions, as well as the partially funded ones, such as Teaching Hospitals, Medical Centres, Federal Tertiary Institutions, etc. pay all receipts due to the Federal Government into the TSA. This presidential directive ended a highly fragmented public accounting regime which caused serious loss of legitimate income meant for the federation account.
It was a move marked by so much resistance at first due to the pervading nature of corruption and difficulties in adapting to changes in the public sector. Before the TSA government agencies operated several accounts in commercial banks that were not only untraceable but bred corruption and ensured that the government was starved of funds for developmental projects.
So much of that has changed today. At least about 20,000 accounts belonging to MDAs in commercial banks have been closed. The closure of these accounts and subsequent elimination of ghost workers currently saves the government N24 billion monthly. Also, the government is said to be in better control of its inflows, since it comes in through a single channel powered by a fintech solution, Remita. As of March 2018, the Accountant General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris was able to determine Nigeria’s cash position as N8.9trillion.
Since 2019 election campaign intensified, Buhari has seized every opportunity to explain how his administration has devoted time to institute integrity and transparency in the processes of government and holding those who have plundered Nigeria’s commonwealth to account for their actions. At every gathering, he has mentioned the execution of the TSA as one of the few steps he took in the right direction to curb wastage.
The FG has been at daggers-drawn with a lot of agencies, which despite the implementation of the TSA policy, have found clever ways to continue to divert government revenue. While some notorious agencies remain a cesspool of corrupt practices, we have indeed seen serious improvements in the remittance of others.
The most noteworthy are Joint Admission and Matriculation Board and the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA). From a revenue that averaged at N3million, JAMB, with the implementation of TSA began to remit as high a N8billion in 2017. In 2019, at the commencement of the sales of Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) forms, the agency recorded revenue as high as N1.2 billion in a week.
While the increase is quite commendable, it sparked reactions and an ensuing probe in 2018. This is because JAMB has neither increased charges, nor increased fees. The cost of UTME forms was reduced from N5,000 to N3500. For NIMASA, remittance went from N4.95billion to N24billion just a year after the agency complied with TSA.
The FG believes potentials of MDAs are largely untapped, while much of the sub-optimal revenue being generated is often lost to inefficiency and leakages. Several corrupt practices have been flagged, including the recovery of huge sums of money including N1.6bn from a single hidden account in a commercial bank. In December 2018, 50 MDAs were accused by the FG of failing to remit the sum of N2.75trillion, being operating surpluses. This discovery necessitated a new performance management framework for Government Owned Enterprises (GOEs), with the twin objective of enhancing performance in the public service, and raising revenue generation and the associated remittances into government treasury.
Improvements recorded so far signal that there is hope that the public sector can be cleansed and sanitized if the government, irrespective of who rules, continues to aggressively drive the adoption of the TSA, not only at national level, but at state and local government level.
At the national level, frequently erring agencies like the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS), Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Federal Road Safety Corps, INEC, Police Force and some Federal Universities must be compelled to adhere strictly to the policy if its gains will be maximized. There are reports that as of now, dollar-denominated accounts like those of foreign missions and the NNPC, are yet to be captured by the TSA. These loopholes undermine the war against corruption in the public sector, which must be won completely and not partially as it festers quickly if not completely ridded.
The Nigerian economy is at a critical time and the government needs to strengthen modalities to recoup remittances which will aid development and planning. This applies at the state levels as well, even as labour unions clamour for increment in national minimum wage which states will be forced to comply with. While some states such as Kogi, Kano, Benue and more recently, Ekiti, have seen the impact of TSA at the national level as an eye-opener, a lot of states are yet to deploy the policy.
President Muhammadu Buhari might not have performed as expected in terms of visible infrastructural development, but his fight against corruption has indeed been fierce, compared to previous administrations. Even when his critics believe his war against corruption has not been followed with commensurate results, Nigeria is sure set on a path of fiscal responsibility. To fully entrench the TSA, the present administration or incoming one still has a long way to go in enforcing full compliance and completely cutting out waste. Nigeria must do all it can, not to return to the days where its revenue purse bled uncontrollably, and the public sector was riddled with paperwork fraud and underhand practices.
Kenny Aderopo
Aderopo is a UK-based postgraduate student of Economics and writer.
