Arrival of Treasury Single Account is the beginning of wisdom (1)

ANYONE who at anytime had thought this day would come, must have been laughed off as a dreamer. Whoever had imagined that the Republic called ‘Nigeria’ would one day run on the fuel of commonsense, the same commonsense that is ordinarily taken for granted in other climes, must have been simply scorned, regaled and dismissed with a wave of the hand.

Why? It was those days when certain men were at the top of their game, huffing and puffing, rolling in stupendous oil money that would never be accounted for. It was those days when a microscopic few ran amuck with the treasury of the country nearly reducing the nation’s currency to a mere tissue paper; dipping their hands into the cookie jar at will and removing same to empty it in private accounts; ferrying billions of naira clandestinely through hundreds of bank accounts illegally created and partnering with their friends and cronies in the banking sector to gang-rape the country, while at the same time intimidating anyone and everyone, who dared to ask questions about how they became to frighteningly rich even with their meagre salary.

While the entire bazaar lasted, Presidents came and when, and all they could do was to either claim ignorance, feign helplessness, or sometimes brazenly pat the pen-thieves on the back, giving all manner of excuses to facilitate their getaway and in some of the most shocking scenarios, defining the serial pen-crimes of their acolytes as mere stealing and not corruption.

After 48 years of serial constitutional breaches, which occasioned the operating of multiple revenue accounts since 1967, President Muhammadu Buhari finally issued a Presidential directive to all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) on August 7, 2015, to comply with government’s instructions on the Treasury Single Account (TSA) by September 15, 2015 or face sanctions. This means that in line with Sections 80 and 162 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended), all receipts due to the Federal Government or any of her agencies are to be paid into the Federal Sub-Treasury Account maintained in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). Thus, after 48 years of wanton recklessness, asphyxiating profligacy and prodigal indulgencies, it has taken only one spartanly honest leader, to show that Nigeria isn’t a hopeless country after all; it has taken one frugal man to demonstrate that what others had passed off as rocket science, is an ordinary thing that may have just required extraordinary courage to make happen.

Just about four months ago, policies of the last government could hardly be obeyed or carried out by those under it. Strangely, the same public servants now dispatch government’s policies and directives with fear and trembling. Such is it that since the Buhari government announced its firm and fire-breathing directive to all Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government to revert to the Treasury Single Account (TSA), it has been rhapsodic frenzy all over the place. A new form of panic, that one can best describe as ‘tear-rubber panic’, has seized the spirit, soul and body of the nooks and crannies of government circle. Heads of parastatals and Director-Generals have been running from pillar to post to straighten the books, wipe out hundreds of accounts and close down different financial storehouses that had hitherto been the den of many shady deals.

Before this time, Nigeria’s accounting books and treasury infrastructure was a total mess. It would only have taken the worst of men, to have let a country degenerate to the level where some Ministries had more than 50 accounts, run and managed via the whims and caprices of the cabal within. A country only needs the misfortune of the kind of leaders of the last 16 years, to get to that point where an ordinary Agency of government simply charged with managing tourism will have tens of accounts, yet there is no meaningful tourist attraction in the country, except for a Director-General always running around in green-white-green. The last 16 years had been a free for all and an unending buffet of the nation’s treasury. It was a perfect conspiracy in which some of our people in government simply perfected plans with their surrogates in the banking sector, and the rest was history.

For many years, Nigeria has had the misfortune of been burdened by commercial banks which at best could be regarded as the Shakespearean Shylock, that had no meaningful object of trade but to feast on the ordinary peoples’ misery. They did not help small businesses grow; neither did they promote policies that economically empowered individuals involved in one trade or the other. Their loan structure is one of the worst slavery anyone can find himself in. These banks littered the country in their hundred, every one of them clutching and clawing at the haggard looking Nigerian economy, to have their share. It was a shamelessly grand deceit.

To be continued.
• Adegbite, Esq. is a lecturer in the Faculty of Law, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. Solar9ng@yahoo.com.