President Buhari has approved the opening of five COVID-19 Donor Accounts, which will form part of the existings Treasury Single Account (TSA) arrangement in five commercial banks.
The financial institution includes Guarantee Trust Bank, united For Africa (UBA), Access Bank, and Zenith Bank.
This development was revealed through a statement made on Tuesday by Henshaw Ogubike, the Directors of Information, Offices of the Accountant General of the Federation.
He further explains that the framework covered all public funds allocated and dedicated to the fight against the deadly virus (COVID-19), including the fiscal stimulus package as well as all donations by corporate bodies and individuals.
It will as well cover the donations under the private sector coalition Against COVID-19 (CACOVID) Fund domiciled at the CBN.
His speech reads parts:
“The TSA Sub-Account in commercial banks is to be used to receive COVID-19 donations only. On no account shall any other funds of Federal Governments Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDA) be deposited into the accounts or any other accounts in commercials banks. All other governments accounts are to be maintained at the CBNs in lines with the Presidential directive on TSA’s, the TSA Guidelines, and related existing Circulars”.
“And all accounts with commercials banks are to be linked with the TSA’s at CBN to provide a single consolidated views of aggregates government cash balances. This will provide a single-window for the main times in accessing the details of receipts and payments across all commercial bank accounts in Nigeria. In the absence of a ready tools to accomplished this requirement, the current CBN Payment gateway may be deployed,” the statement read.
All collections into the commercial banks accounts will be immediately moved into the Federal Government’s Sub-Recurrent Account with the CBN (Central Bank Of Nigeria)
He warned that Failure to sweep all balances within 24 hours, the bank would be deemed a violation of the Presidentials directives on TSA and would face sanctions.
Furthermore, the disbursements of all COVID-19 Funds, including those being collected directly by CBN’s and those domicileds with commercial banks, shall be through appropriation.
“Funds are to be appropriates directly to participating MDA’s 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.
