President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the opening of five
COVID-19 Donor Accounts.
They form part of the existing Treasury Single Account (TSA)
arrangement in five commercial banks.
The financial institutions are Access Bank, First Bank,
Guarantee Trust Bank, United Bank for Africa (UBA) and Zenith Bank.
The development was revealed in a statement on Tuesday by
Henshaw Ogubike, Director of Information, Office of the Accountant General of
the Federation.
He explained that the framework covered all public funds
allocated and dedicated to the fight against COVID-19, including the Fiscal
Stimulus Package as well as all donations by corporate bodies and individuals.
It also covers donations under the Private Sector Coalition
Against COVID-19 (CACOVID) Fund domiciled at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
“The TSA Sub-Account in commercial banks are to be used for
the purposes of receiving COVID-19 donations only. On no account shall any
other fund of Federal Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA) be
deposited into the accounts or any other account in commercial banks. All other
government accounts are to be maintained at the CBN in line with the
Presidential directive on TSA, the TSA Guidelines and related extant Circulars.
“And all accounts with commercial banks are to be linked
with the TSA at CBN to provide a single consolidated view of aggregate
government cash balances. This will provide a single window for real time
access to details of receipts and payments across all commercial bank accounts.
In the absence of a ready tool to accomplish this requirement, the current CBN
Payment gateway may be deployed,” the statement read.
All collections into the commercial bank accounts will be
moved into the Federal Government’s Sub-Recurrent Account with the CBN.
Failure to sweep all balances within 24 hours would be
deemed a violation of the Presidential directive on TSA and would attract
sanctions.
Furthermore, the disbursements of all COVID-19 Fund
including those being collected directly by CBN and those domiciled with
commercial banks shall be through appropriation.
“Funds are to be appropriated directly to participating MDA
and spending units like the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Humanitarian
Affairs, Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, among others rather than to an
intermediary agency like the Presidential Task Force (PTF). Administrative cost
of the PTF shall be appropriated separately to the PTF Secretariat. Respective
spending units and their Accounting Officers would take full responsibility for
funds appropriated to them and likely bottlenecks at the PTF are eliminated,”
he said.
The government said this will bind all spending units to the
Appropriation Act and provide the greatest measure of credibility and
transparency to the management of the donation.
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