Treasury Single Account

CHAPTER ONE

1.1     INTRODUCTION

Treasury Single Account is a public accounting system under which all government revenue, receipts and income are collected into single account, usually maintained by the country’s Central Bank and all payments done through this account as well.

Also treasury single account come into existence in Nigeria on 15th of September 2015 by the new elected government president Muhammed Buhari in other to utilize public fund and maximize corruption in the country. Although Treasury Single Account has been in existence in some countries before now, such as United Kingdom, France and some part of the United State of American (U.S.A.). The purpose is primarily to ensure accountability of government revenue, enhance transparency and avoid misapplication of public funds. The maintenance of Treasury Single Account will help to ensure proper cash management by eliminating the funds usually left with different deposit money banks and in a way of enhancing reconciliation of revenue collection and payment.

Section 80(1) of the 1999 constitution as amended states “ All revenue or other money raised or received by the federation (not being revenue or other money raised or payable under this constitution or any act of the National assembly into any other public fund of the federation established for a specific purpose) shall be paid into and form one consolidated revenue fund of the federation”. Successive governments have continued to operate multiple accounts for the collection and spending of government revenue in flagrant disregard to the provision of the constitution which required that all government revenues should be remitted into a single account. It was not until 2012 that government ran a pilot scheme for a single account using 217 ministries, department and agencies as a test case.

The pilot scheme saved Nigeria about N500 billion in frivolous spending. The success of the pilot scheme motivated the government to fully implement Treasury Single Account (TSA), leading to the directives to banks to implement the technology platform that will help accommodate the Treasury Single Account (TSA) scheme. The recent directive by President Muhammed Buhari that all government revenues should be remitted to a treasury single account is in consonance with this programme and in compliance with the provisions of the 1999 constitution Central Bank of Nigerian, 2015 (CBN 2015).