Treasury Single Account & Consolidated Revenue Fund

Treasury Single Account & Consolidated Revenue Fund

Quick Answer: The Treasury Single Account (TSA) is the unified bank-account structure through which all federal receipts and payments are transacted at the CBN, mandated by presidential directive in August 2015. The Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF), established by Constitution §80, is the Federal Government's main spending account; the Federation Account, established by §162, is the distributable pool shared among federal, state, and local governments.

The Treasury Single Account (TSA)

The Treasury Single Account is defined as a unified structure of government bank accounts enabling consolidation and optimal utilisation of government cash resources. It is a single account (or a set of linked sub-accounts) through which the government transacts all its receipts and payments and obtains a consolidated view of its cash position at any given time.

The TSA concept was first introduced under the Jonathan administration to improve transparency, but it was fully mandated and enforced from 2015 under the Buhari administration. The key instruments are:

• A presidential directive in August 2015 requiring all MDAs to open and operate a TSA.
• A circular dated 7 August 2015 issued by the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, specifying the account: Account Name: Accountant General (Federal Sub-Treasury), Account No. 3000002095, maintained at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
• The OAGF e-Collection scheme, under which all revenues and monies payable to Federal Government public-sector entities are made through Deposit Money Banks and electronic channels using the CBN Payment Gateway for direct credit into the FGN account or designated MDA account at CBN. MDAs were directed to close existing revenue, project, revolving fund, development fund, and other collection accounts in commercial banks and transfer balances to the CBN.

The directive applied to fully funded organs (ministries, departments, agencies, foreign missions) and partially funded ones (teaching hospitals, medical centres, federal tertiary institutions). For self-funding agencies (such as NNPC, NPA, NIMASA, FIRS, NCS), sub-accounts linked to the TSA were maintained at CBN, with access to funds based on approved budgetary provisions.

The TSA is not itself a constitutional fund. It is an administrative and operational instrument that gives effect to the constitutional rule that federal revenues be pooled — it channels receipts into the Consolidated Revenue Fund framework.

The Consolidated Revenue Fund (Constitution §80)

Section 80 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) establishes the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) of the Federation:

• §80(1): All revenues or other moneys raised or received by the Federation (except revenues payable into any other public fund established for a specific purpose) shall be paid into and form one Consolidated Revenue Fund.
• §80(2): No money shall be withdrawn from the CRF except to meet expenditure charged upon it by the Constitution, or where the issue of those moneys has been authorised by an Appropriation Act, a Supplementary Appropriation Act, or an Act passed under §81.
• §80(3): No money shall be withdrawn from any other public fund of the Federation unless authorised by an Act of the National Assembly.
• §80(4): Withdrawals must be in the manner prescribed by the National Assembly.

Section 81 governs the authorisation of expenditure from the CRF: the President causes estimates of revenue and expenditure to be prepared and laid before the National Assembly; the heads of expenditure are included in an Appropriation Bill, which, when passed, authorises issues from the CRF.

The CRF is, in practical terms, the Federal Government's own spending account, controlled by the Appropriation Act and used to fund the day-to-day running of the federal government.

"First Charge" on the CRF

A first charge on the CRF is expenditure that the Constitution itself charges directly on the fund, payable without annual appropriation. These are statutory charges — they do not depend on the National Assembly voting them each year. Examples include the remuneration and allowances of certain constitutional officers and statutory transfers to bodies the Constitution funds directly. Section 162(9), for instance, provides that any amount standing to the credit of the judiciary in the Federation Account is paid directly to the National Judicial Council for disbursement. The effect is that charged items are paid first, before discretionary appropriated spending.

The Federation Account (Constitution §162)

Section 162 is the distributable pool of the federation:

• §162(1): The Federation maintains a special account called the Federation Account into which all revenues collected by the Government of the Federation are paid (except proceeds of personal income tax of armed forces, police, foreign-affairs personnel, and FCT residents).
• §162(2): The President, on the advice of the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), tables before the National Assembly proposals for revenue allocation, considering population, equality of states, internal revenue generation, land mass, terrain, and population density, with the derivation principle not less than 13% of revenue accruing directly from natural resources.
• §162(3)–(8): Amounts in the Federation Account are distributed among the federal, state, and local governments as prescribed by the National Assembly; each state maintains a State Joint Local Government Account for local government allocations.

CRF vs Federation Account — The Key Distinction

In practice, revenue first flows into the Federation Account, is distributed via FAAC among the three tiers, and the federal share then forms part of the resources available to the CRF, from which federal expenditure is appropriated through the National Assembly.

Why the COMPRO Exam Tests This

The COMPRO Financial Regulations domain (30%) routinely tests whether a candidate can distinguish the TSA (an administrative consolidation mechanism at the CBN), the CRF (the federal spending account under §80, controlled by appropriation), and the Federation Account (the distributable pool under §162). Confusing the Federation Account with the CRF is one of the most common errors: the Federation Account is shared, the CRF is spent by the Federal Government. Remember also that the TSA gives operational effect to the constitutional pooling rule — it is not itself a constitutional fund.