A group of civil society organisations (CSOs) in the country committed to anti-corruption drive has flawed the Federal Government on the implementation of the Single Treasury Account (STA), the Open Treasury Portal (OTP) and many other fiscal efficiency initiatives in view of the abuses that characterized their implementation, such as the failure to remit funds to Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDAs) from the STA, among others.
The group, which comprised 30 CSOs, during its press conference on anti-corruption agenda setting for the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led administration, noted that while the TSA was initiated to bring all government funds in bank accounts within the effective control and operational purview of the Treasury, in order to: Enthrone centralized, transparent and accountable revenue management, the implementation had been unimpressive and called for immediate review of the process.
Specifically, the CSOs lamented that the government failed to remit resources back to MDA’s in some cases when needed, resulting in bureaucratic bottlenecks and ineffective implementation of government programmes by such MDAs.
They cited as an example the case of the Nigerian Immigration Service and international passport booklet scarcity.
Similarly, anti-corruption crusaders recalled that the Federal Government on December 9, 2019 launched the OTP in a bid to demonstrate transparency and accountability in the management of public sector finances.
According to them, based on the measure, all MDAs are expected to publish monthly performance of their budget, functions, and economic activities within seven days of the end of each month from January 2018, while the Accountant-General of the Federation (AGF) will publish monthly accounts, detailing the fiscal performance of the federation, including receipts from all the (revenue) collection agencies and payments out of the federation account.
The OTP also required the AGF to publish daily reports of all payments made to MDAs above N10 million, while MDAs will publish daily reports of payment, they made above N5 million.
The CSOs pointed out that while there were reports on failure of MDAs to upload daily financial information just a month after its launch, other reports drew attention to, inadequate information, missing documents and deleted items on the portal.
They also cited a 2020 BudgIT report, which indicated that data uploaded on the portal from September 2018 to May 2020 showed that at least 5,000 payment records valued at N278 billion were without descriptions and 275 payment records with a value of N43 billion were without beneficiary name.
The civil society activists further noted that “despite the restoration of the portal in the first quarter of 2022, financial statements posted on the portal indicated that some records were missing, including those of the office of the accountant general of the federation (OAGF) which oversees the portal.”
