Treasury Single Account and University Administration in South East, Nigeria

Abstract

Over the years, the problem of funding has been the bane of educational development in Nigeria. Important as the education sector is to other sectors of the Nigerian economy, its development has been retarded overtime because of multifaceted funding challenges which include unavailability of funds, delays in approval and releases of funds and so on. Government delays in releases of approved funds are seen as impediments to achieving the onerous task of research and development of the nation’s universities, hence this work on treasury single account and university administration in South East Nigeria. In a bid to investigate the recently introduced treasury single account on university administration in south east Nigeria, three federal universities were selected viz: Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, University of Nigeria, Nsukka and Federal University of Technology, Owerri. Literature on the various subject matters was extensively reviewed and survey research method was adopted. In addition to the volume of insights gathered from the literature reviewed and information gathered through face to face interviews, primary data were collected with the aid of questionnaire. The data were analytically regressed. It was discovered that the newly introduced treasury single account has, so far, among other challenges, affected financial operations in the bursary units and resultantly slowed down activities in the universities. It revealed that there is a sharp departure from the past when planned programmes were executed as planned in the universities. It was, therefore, recommended that tertiary institutions should be excluded from TSA implementation in order to achieve the all important objective of research and development in the university system and the federal government should immediately carry out a comprehensive review of the policy implementation so as to be properly guided on the appropriate organisations where TSA is required.