Senator gives condition for N’Assembly to adopt TSA

                                                     

The cold war between the National Assembly and the executive over the issue of Treasury Single Account deepened on Thursday with a declaration by a ranking member of the senate that the only condition that would make the federal parliament be part of the  policy was if the judiciary would also be part of the system.

President Muhammadu Buhari, had, during last week’s media chat, said he was having challenges with the National Assembly over the TSA policy.
Both chambers of Nigeria’s National Assembly had consistently insisted that they would not be part of the TSA because,  embracing the arrangement would amount to surrendering their autonomy to the executive.
Spokesperson for the upper chamber, Senator Sabi Abdullahi, had described the TSA  as an executive programme and that  submitting to the policy was surrendering autonomy of the legislature’s first line  charge, to the executive.

Similarly, spokesperson for the House of Representatives, Abdulrazak Sa’ad Namdas also insisted that the TSA remains an executive policy which could be embraced by the legislature or any other arm of government if they wished.
But giving further insights into why the federal parliament was mounting serious opposition to the policy in an interview with our correspondent on Thursday, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Works, Senator Kabiru Gaya, said his colleagues would continue to reject the policy if the judiciary would not be involved in the arrangement.
Gaya, a rankihg  senator and two-term governor of Kano State said, ” Personally,  I do not see any big deal in the National Assembly keying into the  Treasury Single Account but the only condition is that the three arms of government must be involved.