10 years after launch, Treasury Single Account reshapes Nigeria’s public finance system

Folalumi Alaran in Abuja

A decade after the Federal Government fully implemented the Treasury Single Account in August 2015 under late President Muhammadu Buhari, officials and analysts say the reform has significantly transformed Nigeria’s fiscal management, improved transparency and curtailed longstanding revenue leakages.

The policy, which centralised government revenues into a unified structure domiciled at the Central Bank of Nigeria, was introduced to end a fragmented system where ministries, departments and agencies operated thousands of independent bank accounts beyond effective treasury oversight.

At the time of implementation, the platform — powered by indigenous payment technology Remita — enabled government to recover more than ₦3 trillion previously held idle in commercial banks. The funds were not missing but had been outside treasury visibility, forcing government to borrow at interest while its own money remained unused.

Before the reform, the Federal Government maintained over 17,000 separate accounts across financial institutions, making it impossible to determine its real cash position. Revenue collections often failed to reach the Consolidated Revenue Fund as required by law, and agencies routinely under-remitted earnings or retained public funds to generate private interest.

Fiscal authorities say centralising inflows ended the practice and restored compliance with constitutional provisions governing public finance.

Beyond the initial recovery, the TSA has continued to shape fiscal discipline. By July 2019, collections processed through the system exceeded ₦10 trillion, reflecting the scale of revenues previously outside consolidated monitoring.

Former finance minister Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed had disclosed that the government saved an average of about ₦45 billion monthly in interest payments because improved cash visibility reduced reliance on short-term borrowing. The consolidation also eliminated more than ₦24 billion monthly in bank charges linked to maintaining thousands of accounts.

Officials also linked the framework to improved monetary management, saying unified tracking of public funds strengthened control of liquidity, eased pressure on the naira and supported foreign reserve management.

The system proved particularly useful during the 2016 economic recession, when enhanced visibility over government balances allowed authorities to allocate resources more efficiently without immediately resorting to emergency borrowing.

Analysts say the reform also altered institutional behaviour across MDAs, with remittances rising sharply once agencies could no longer conceal internally generated revenue.

Despite the progress, experts note that some public funds still remain outside the TSA structure, highlighting the need for expanded enforcement and legislative backing to protect the system from policy reversals.

They also urge government to extend the framework to foreign-currency inflows and continue relying on local technology providers to maintain operational continuity.

Ten years on, the TSA is widely regarded as one of Nigeria’s most consequential fiscal reforms — credited with recovering trillions of naira, reducing borrowing costs and improving accountability — while policymakers debate how to strengthen it further as fiscal pressures grow.