Accountant General: Treasury Single Account Hits N4.3trn

The Accountant-General of the Federation, Alhaji Ahmed Idris says the Treasury Single Account (TSA) has risen to N4.3trn, The Leadership reports.
Idris, made the disclosure at a workshop in Lagos with the theme: ‘‘Operation, Implementation and Challenges of Treasury Single Accounts” organised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN).
Idris noted that in the past some Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) had more than 10,000 accounts, majority of which were dormant.

He said, “Even if we detached accountability, transparency and anti- corruption from TSA, it is still very important. That is not the reason why government started TSA. It is an anti-corruption tool, no doubt, but it is more than that.

“We are doing TSA because, sometime in 2011 and 2012, before that time, the government of Nigeria, working with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) during Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s first tenure, carried out a broad financial reform looking at the country’s financial system and one of the things they asked us to do was to do a census of bank accounts.

“Even though restricted to mainline government ministries, we found out that among the ministries that were based in Abuja then, there were more than 10,000 bank accounts for about 30 ministries.

“It was not only the number that was the problem; the practice was that when new heads of ministries or agencies came on board, they would go and open new bank accounts based on personal interest, forgetting the previous accounts. When they open these new accounts and change signatories, whatever balances in the previous accounts remain there.

“Even the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) was coming to us to draw our attention to the accounts, telling us to come and close them.”