The Federal Government has been reminded that the Treasury Single Account (TSA) has fallen short of expectation in reducing public sector corruption as government officials are fingered in circumventing the policy.
A recent investigative report by Daily Trust had revealed that six years into the full-scale implementation of the TSA, government was still losing its revenue to corrupt officials.
An investigative journalist with Daily Trust, Chris Agabi, revealed this during an anti-corruption radio programme, PUBLIC CONSCIENCE, produced by the Progressive Impact Organization for Community Development (PRIMORG) on Wednesday in Abuja.
According to Agabi, the TSA policy which was initially designed to promote accountability and transparency in revenues received by the government now faces abuse by civil servants who have devised different means of circumventing the policy.
While calling for the urgent review of the TSA policy to forestall further loss of government revenues, Agabi lamented that the TSA review committee, which is made up of the Minister of Finance, both Accountant-General and Auditor General of the Federation, amongst other stakeholders, were yet to hit the ground running after four months of setup. Hence, he blamed President Muhammadu Buhari and the National Assembly for not doing enough to strengthen the TSA.
“Six years down the line, in as much as there are gains, there are also situations where the process is being abused, of course from the same civil servants who have found ways of circumventing the process, particularly in terms of using the funds accrued. They have found ways to take out these monies without following due process.
“Based on my interactions with some of the civil servants, some of them said if you look at the bulk of the funds that come out of the MDAs, most of them pass through the private accounts of the civil servants – now one should ordinarily envisage that except that you are the direct beneficiary, money shouldn’t go to your account directly. This is what is going on in the MDAs, and that is what the TSA was intended to prevent.”
On the need to review the TSA policy, Agabi stated: “The review is necessary, it needs to be much deeper. I also think the Monitoring and Evaluation of the TSA policy are quite weak because we shouldn’t have been talking about these things if immediately from 2015, we began implementation by reviewing the implementation from time to time.”
He advised the government that transparency would encourage citizens to trust them more.
Assessing the progress of TSA since 2015, a Political Economist and Public Development Researcher, Adefolarin Olamilekan, stated that the TSA policy is laudable and has been proven in other parts of the world. He averred that legislation would help strengthen TSA policy against the exploitation of the civil servants in connivance with the political class. He called for legislation of TSA to get to the 36 states of the federation.
Olamilekan said, “The gang-up doesn’t end between the public servants and the private sector; it includes the political class which controls the political power and political economy of Nigeria. We can send all kinds of memos on how corruption has been spread but know that the people that will teach the politicians how to steal from the government coffers are the civil servants, the people that will help the politicians to cover their money are the private sector and the politicians will use that same money to corrupt every individual and buy their way into the system.”
He called on citizens to be responsible and join in the fight against corruption in the public sector by shunning shortcuts and insisting on due process when making payments into government accounts.
Public Conscience is a syndicated weekly anti-corruption radio program used by PRIMORG to draw government and citizens’ attention to corruption and integrity issues in Nigeria.
The program has the support of the MacArthur Foundation.