The full implementation of Treasury Single Account (TSA) has brought huge economic benefits to both the federal government and private sector vendors.
The TSA Director, Sylva Okolieaboh, stated during a capacity building session with the delegates from Gambia who are in Nigeria to understudy the TSA implementation.
He explained that the Nigerian government is committed to the reform such that it even holds so many unplanned benefits like job opportunities and revenue generation for individuals and organisations.
He pointed out that though the TSA reform has today become the cynosure of other African countries, it was however not without a painstaking effort at enforcing compliance from Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
According to him, “following the order by the President to MDAs to comply with the policy, we worked assiduously to ensure that the mandate was achieved in no more than two weeks.
“The rigour of executing this project belies its inherent complexities. It took painstaking efforts from the Presidency, Minister of Finance, Account General of the Federation and other stakeholders to assuage the strain of the change on finances thus making it as seamless as possible,”
Meanwhile, the Remita gateway has been described as an important tool that serves as a passageway for the Treasury Single Account.
Explaining how Remita connects to the Central Bank, commercial banks, micro-finance banks, card schemes and digital wallets in ensuring that authorized financial institutions and schemes can partake in the national payment scheme, Demola Igbalajobi, Divisional Head, Remita International Business, stated that the Remita payment gateway plays very indispensable role in Nigeria’s TSA.
The role, he said, ranges from bridging between government systems and the financial ecosystem, securing integration with the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) of Nigeria, providing an indelible electronic invoice for every collection transaction, to giving government full oversight of its cash inflows and outflows, amongst many others.
