We Won’t Be A Part Of Buhari’s TSA – NASS Confronts President

The National Assembly on January 3 rejected the Treasury Single Account (TSA) being implemented by President Muhammadu Buhari.

President Buhari had during his first media chat said he was having problems with the NASS over the TSA.

He said: “We are having problems with them (National Assembly) on TSA. We have to have a closed door session with them.”

Both chambers reacted to Buhari’s statement saying that such would amount to, “surrendering of their autonomy to the executive.”

Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, the spokesman of the senate, told Daily Trust: “There is no trouble on TSA, it is as an executive programme and we cannot surrender our autonomy to the executive.

“Submitting ourselves to the TSA is surrendering our autonomy to the executive. We are on the first line charge as guaranteed by the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

“Why should we give you our funds to put in the TSA and then we will be subjected to your own control, is that autonomy?”

“That is just the issue; we’ve given our total support to the TSA programme. As far as we are concerned, we cannot subject ourselves to it because it amounts to mortgaging our autonomy.

“Our autonomy is guaranteed by the constitution and how our money should be paid is also guaranteed by the constitution.

“Are we saying our autonomy should be jettisoned? Are we a revenue generating arm? Are we saying that the constitution should be jettisoned, because somebody wants to do TSA? Are we going to put the Constitution aside and follow somebody’s wish? What we are following is constitutional,” he said.

In the same vien, Abdulrazak Sa’ad Namdas, spokesman of the House of Representatives, restated that TSA stays an executive policy.

He said: “Every arm of government has its ways of operations. The issue of TSA is an executive matter, and in as much as we want to work together with the executive for good governance, we are not part of TSA for now.”

The Treasury Single Account is one of the financial policies implemented by the federal government of Nigeria to consolidate all in flows from all the ministries, departments and agencies in the country.

The TSA can therefore cover all funds including earmark and extra-budgetary accounts or even funds held in trust by government. To make this work, accounting systems must be robust and capable of accurately distinguishing trust assets in the TSA.