University dons are split over how the Treasury Single Account (TSA) affects funds management and the autonomy of universities.
The TSA is meant to ensure all revenue receipts and payments are done through a Consolidate Revenue Account (CRA) at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
For all Federal Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies in general and federal universities in particular this means all revenue receipts and payments in the form of tuition fees, research grants from both local and foreign sponsors would have to go through the CRA to the TSA.
This move has been criticised by some university dons as infringing on university autonomy and ignoring the peculiarities of its internal systems of control. The TSA was named as one of the reasons for November’s one-week warning strike.
“The software for the TSA is general and rigid and does not capture the peculiarities of universities. When we get grants from home and abroad, it does not capture it. Other elements are leave of absence, and sabbaticals; the software cannot capture these statutory practices that have been established in universities.
“We need a special template that would capture the requirements of the universities. The TSA software has been built around general bureaucracy,” Tunde Fatunde, professor of Foreign Languages, Lagos State University, said.
For instance, it was recently reported that the Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta has had over $2 million grants for a project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation domiciled in the TSA for almost one year, according to Olusola Oyewole, who is the vice chancellor of FUNAAB. Implementation of the TSA started in 2012.
Other university dons have held that initially the TSA caused some delays in the disbursement of funds but this has improved and getting more efficient.
“What I can say for sure is that when the TSA was fully implemented in September, there were some initial delays in the disbursement of funds. Now, it has improved at least for my department we get funds we need as at when due and there appears to be more efficiency in the system,” Ike Mowete, professor of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at the University of Lagos, said.
Some lecturers at state universities think this does not seem to be anything to worry about since they rely on revenue generated internally by their founding states governments.
“The TSA will affect only federal universities as I understand it. State universities would largely depend on the states that founded them for funding,” Yunus Dauda, lecturer faculty of management sciences, Lagos State University, said.
At the University of Ilorin, Kwara State, Rebecca Aimiohu, who is the deputy registrar, said, “the TSA does not seem to have affected funds management adversely. Salaries are paid as at when do and since the Federal Government is bent on implementing it, each university would need to find a way of dealing with it.
“It is true that all federal universities have more similarities than differences. However, each university has its peculiarities and what is applicable to one might not apply to the other.”
