Public Financial Management and Adoption of Treasury Single Account (TSA) in Akwa Ibom State Civil Service

The management of the finances of the Federal Government of Nigeria has always taken the center stage of every administration in this country. Before the introduction and formal adoption of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) policy in Nigeria, it is on record that Nigeria ran over 3,657 different bank accounts across various banks in the country. Most corruption cases in Nigeria cannot but are traceable to this fact. Investigation shows that some of these accounts were forgotten by government and exploited by few individuals in government and in the banks where such accounts were domiciled. The experiences of Akwa Ibom State were not far-fetched from what was obtainable in the Nigeria’s situation. The Akwa Ibom State Government, as a matter of policy also decided to mop-up all its financial resources from all its various bank accounts across the State to a particular single account called Treasury Single Account (TSA) in the Zenith Bank Plc. The main objective of this study was to investigate whether the adoption of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) has caused unemployment through the down-sizing of bank staff strength; discouraged competition in other banks, and created “new monopoly” in the specified bank of domiciliation of the Treasury Single Account (TSA). The Historical and Descriptive research designs were used. The findings of the study among others showed that the adoption of the TSA has encouraged financial transparency in Akwa Ibom State civil service. It was recommended that all the bank workers that were retrenched when the TSA policy was adopted should be re-absorbed in the bank of domiciliation of the TSA.