PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari’s promise to fight corruption and rid Nigeria of abuse of public funds with full implementation of the treasury single account (TSA) appears to have overwhelmed his administration as he is “eager” to hand over power on Monday, May 29.
Introduced in 2012 as part of the long-running public service reforms started some years ago, the TSA’s objectives include instilling order, accountability and transparency into the government’s finances, collecting all its revenues, blocking leakages and aligning with the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) cashless economy.
Its operation officially commenced in September 2015 when the federal government directed the deposit money banks to transfer about N1.2 trillion to the CBN.
By February 2017, the CBN had mopped up about N5.24 trillion into the framework after the government closed over 20,000 bank accounts of ministries, departments and agencies.
Good initiative, but wrong mechanism
The TSA was opened to address irregularities, ensure accountability, link accounts for all government payments and receipts and enable the tracking of all revenues.
When it came up, the concept was good, and it is still good and will continue to be good, but the only worry is the management of the framework, Bala Zakka, a finance expert and public affairs commentator said.
How could a former Accountant General of the Federation (AGF) steal so much from the national treasury? If we have a centralised way of tracking all government revenues, how could he allegedly steal so much? Zakka questioned.
A High Court in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) remanded the former AGF, Ahmed Idris, over money laundering and diversion of public funds after he was arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
Idris was indicted on a 14-count charge of stealing and criminal breach of trust to N109.5 billion.
“That simply means the control mechanism is ineffective,” Zakka lamented, stressing that TSA allows government officials to temper with public money.
“So, it is one thing to be able to bring in the revenue but another to block leakages. Leakages allowed the Accountant-General to steal so much from the national treasury,” he explained.
A one-time minister for power, expected to use his office to revive some power projects, was allegedly accused of stealing so much, Zakka noted.
Sale Mamman had conspired with ministry staff in charge of the accounts of the Zungeru and Mambilla Hydro Electric Power projects and allegedly diverted N22 billion.
These emphasise a point to the fact that Nigeria makes much money but “technically loses it to economic vampires, marauders and traitors,” Zakka asserted.
Nigeria’s corruption rank rises between 2015-2022
Nigeria is the 150 least corrupt nation out of 180 countries, according to the 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index reported by Transparency International.
The index ranks countries and territories based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived relative to other countries and regions in the index.
TSA not fit for Nigeria
The TSA is simply an administrative bureaucracy and utterly unfit for a $450 billion (Nigeria’s) economy, Kazeem Bello, a global development economist, said. “If you are talking about Togo, Cameron or Burkina or those tiny economies, then such a system would work.”
Bello had presented a paper in Abuja to critique the TSA soon after former President Goodluck Jonathan’s government approved it.
“They were just about to commence its implementation when that session took place, and I was invited to make that presentation. That was in 2014,” Bello said.
According to him, the former president (Jonathan) got the gist of the hiccups in the implementation and suspended it till after the 2015 elections; however, Buhari dusted it and commenced its implementation.
Bello said, “What was eventually created as the implementation strategy under the President Buhari team was a disaster. It was way worse than what we critiqued when President Jonathan approved it.”
According to him, the people saddled with the responsibility of implementing the TSA conjugated the entire master plan and created an impression that the original implementation master plan was re-engineered to purposely tackle and address President Buhari’s determination to stamp out corruption.
“When I visited Nigeria in 2016 and had an opportunity to review the implementation strategy first-hand. I gave up on Nigeria,” he said.
According to Bello, he predicted three specific things, and those predictions have happened since the TSA came on board in 2015.
- First, I stated that the implementation would not curb corruption as expected. Still, I am amazed that my dragnet analysis did not capture the fact that the corruption situation in Nigeria will attain the current worse scenarios where billions and close to trillions are being easily stolen from the FGN, including oil and gas income and even our Foreign Reserves simply looted and drained in the name of forex intervention. So, where is the fight against corruption purportedly stated by President Buhari’s financial gurus that the TSA will assist in wiping out?
- Second, I stated and showed that this TSA implementation strategy would bankrupt the FGN. I am glad that I have been vindicated six or seven years after. The FGN needs help to generate revenue to run the budget. The TSA’s number one misjudgement is that it is potentially inherent with the capacity to result in the government losing income and revenue, plus the potential to shrink the size of the revenue maximisation strategy for the Government. Even the TSA pool risks being mismanaged, especially when you saddle its management with clueless or fraudulent people.
- Third, the TSA was expected to be an engineering workforce. It was supposed to be powered by technology and real-time related technologies to help FGN internally generate revenue and revenue from export. None of that technology is welcome by the hawks in Nigeria, that dread those technologies and what they will expose. One of the critiques that I and some of us presented to the President Jonathan administration on this TSA project centred on the need for more deployment of requisite technologies to power such a system effectively and create the kind of results that the government will marvel at.
Continuing, Bello said it was, unfortunately, that the aspect they recommended that should be involved wholly was precisely what President Buhari’s administration jettisoned and wiped out in its implementation.
“Please don’t be deceived about the effectiveness or not of the TSA platform. For these three reasons I have presented above, the so-called TSA has wrecked Nigeria,” Bello stressed.
When asked to throw more light on the implementation aspect that was left out, he added, “I am referring to the lack of application of technologies or absence of it in the implementation strategy.”
CBN, finance ministry declined comments
When contacted for comment, CBN’s acting director of corporate communications, Isa Abdulmumin, declined response.
“Fiscal authority under the purview of the Ministry of Finance is in charge of TSA. Please reach out to them,” Abdulmumin replied through WhatsApp.
The Ministry of Finance also declined comment.
“Please direct your inquiry to the office of the Accountant General,” Yunusa Abdullahi, special adviser on media and communications to the minister of finance, budget and national planning, Zainab Ahmed, replied through WhatsApp chat.
But according to the TSA essential requirements, the Ministry of Finance has complete oversight of government cash flows across bank accounts, as does the Office of the Accountant-General.
The ICIR, however, could not reach the Office of the Accountant-General after a series of calls did not go through when filing this report.
TSA has deepened corruption
The treasury single account has not helped in any way in curbing corruption in this administration which was intended; instead, it has deepened corruption, Abu Noruwa, a lecturer at the Department of Finance, University of Lagos, said.
“I said so because the TSA was set up originally to curb corruption, but now it has only filtered by removing the lower cadres of corrupt people from the corruption process and opening it to the senior cadres of all the ministries who claimed to be fighting corruption,” he explained.”
What may face the incoming government?
The Unilag lecturer said the incoming government could perfect the TSA in fighting corruption if it decides to do so politically, without looking at who is involved in the corruption process to serve as an example to others.
“It is only by this that people will refrain from being corrupt at any time,” he maintained.
Bello stressed, “I hope someone wakes up in the new administration and investigates all that I am presenting before they adopt that same wrong medication.”
And Zakka added, “It is only our hope that the incoming government will block all the lacuna and be able to appoint people of integrity to manage the TSA for the benefit of the masses.”
Source: The ICIR
