Pres. Buhari has revealed that his administration has within 3 months saved N2.2 trillion for the nation through the enforcement of the Treasury Single Account, TSA. He made the revelation in London during a meeting with Nigerians resident in the city on Thursday night.
He said: When we discovered that we were already in trouble, we tried to enforce the TSA. This government did not initiate it, it was the previous government, but it was so unpopular to the previous government. For its own reasons, it couldn’t impose it, but when we came and we found out that we were broke, we saw that this is the way to do it.
I will give you two examples to convince you. Firstly, the NNPC had more than 45 accounts. Ministry of Defence had more than 70 accounts. Tell me which Accountant-General can trace all these accounts? So, we imposed TSA. By the end of December, coming to January 2016, we mopped up more than N2.2trn which would have been used through bureaucratic system to raise vouchers and sign cheques so that they don’t go into the next budget.”
Speaking further on the state of the economy, he revealed that some Nigerians were behind the crisis. He said: “We found out, when I say we, I mean present FG, that some of the directors in the Central Bank own the Bureau De Change businesses. So when the foreign exchange comes, they take it and give government the change.
So we stopped the FG giving Bureau De Change foreign exchange. Fellow countrymen and women, I am giving you a tip of the iceberg of the problem we inherited and we are getting so hard because we have no other way of running the country unless we make everybody accountable.”….. and chair….