Treasury Single Account Policy and Government Revenue in Nigeria

Over the years, the Nigerian economy has deeply relied on revenue generated from the sale of crude oil for the running of government activities; and this has brought reckless spending and mismanagement of public funds in governance. Before now, several government agencies in Nigeria were self-sufficient to collect money on behalf of the federal government and they had the freedom to expend part of it since they only needed to remit only a portion of the declared amount. Several challenges are posed due to high cost of cash management in Nigeria economy which is increasing every year. One of the challenges arising from high-cash usage among others includes operation of multiple accounts. Governments have been operating multiple accounts for revenue collection and spending in contrary to the provision of the Nigerian Constitution which requires that all government revenue generation must be remitted into a single account. As a result of economic challenges, Central Bank of Nigeria was directed to open a Consolidated Revenue Account where all government revenue, incomes and inflows are collected into one single account maintained by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN, 2014). This is known as Treasury Single Account (TSA).