National Assembly, judiciary shun TSA as remittances hit N8.9 trillion
The resistance by the legislature and judiciary to embrace the Treasury Single Account (TSA) is one of the greatest challenges to the fight against corruption in Nigeria’s public finance management, according to the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (OAGF).
This is as remittances to TSA have hit N8.9 trillion.
The TSA is an operating bank account where receipts (inflows and expenditure) of government transactions are electronically and transparently captured.
The Accountant- General of the Federation (AGF) Alhaji Ahmad Idris who announced this, said to date, 1,674 Ministries , Departments and Agencies (MDAs) have been enrolled in the implementation of TSA.
Idris, who was represented by a director and Coordinator of TSA e- collection in the Funds Department, Mr. Sylva Okolieaboh, made the disclosure at the weekend in Abuja at a training workshop for journalists.
He gave insight to the successes already registered by the TSA as: “Savings of over N40B/month in Ways & Means charges; Ability to determine consolidated FG cash position; Improved monetary policy implementation through the elimination of costs associated with liquidity management arising from DMB float Better traction in inflation management through reduction in Ways & Means and money supply; Significant improvement in Federal Government liquidity position; Improved budget implementation due to enhanced liquidity; Better control and oversight over MDA operations.”
Idris stressed the need for obstacles for the smooth implementation of the TSA to be removed by the “National Assembly, National Judicial Council (NJC) and other stakeholders.”
In a related development, the Presidential Initiative of Continuous Audit ( PICA) a taskforce undertaking human resources audits in all MDAs of government to confirm their actual wages have smashed a syndicate in the Police wages office running to over N68 billion in bloated salaries and other allowances normally siphoned from the treasury after an audit was carried out in the police formations across the country.
The police ghost workers fraud was detected following the enrollment of Police formations in the Federal Government Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) by the OAGF wherein it was discovered that the police staff was bloated to 370,000 whereas actual manpower is 291,685 , indicating over 80,000 ghost names on the force’s payroll.
Following, the detection, salary commitments for the month dropped from N43.497 billion to N22.276 billion, indicating that the balance of over N68 billion was monthly being siphoned by officials.
The Director of Special Duties in the Federal Ministry of Finance/ Secretary, PICA, Dr. Mohammed Dikwa, in a paper declared that the syndicate was smashed and some eleven officials already undergoing trial in courts of competent jurisdiction .
Dikwa also presented an update of the PICA efforts so far in check fraudulent practices through ghost workers syndrome.
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