Why Govs Are Against TSA – Gov Okowa
Senator Ifeanyi Okowa, Delta State Governor[/caption]
Delta State governor, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa, has explained why the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governors declined to implement the Treasury Single Account (TSA) in their states.
Okowa, while delivering his first year performance report in Asaba, reiterated that despite the clear stand of the Federal Government on it, the governors’ were still against the TSA.
He cleared the air on the increase in his expenditure approval limit to N250 million against the N50 million provision in the previous regimes of ex- governors James Ibori and Emmanuel Uduanghan.
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He slammed Edo State governor, Adams Oshiomhole, for boasting that he would defeat him (Okowa) in an electoral contest in Delta State, saying that his (Oshiomhole) comment was pointless.
He said, “In the first instance, there are so many states of the All Progressives Congress, APC that have not embraced TSA. This is something that we have been studying, it is not just enough, we have to study it so that we do not make any mistakes, we are aware that there are many gains in the TSA, we are also aware that we need to also apply it wisely.
“We need to understudy it and the Commissioner of Finance is still understudying it. By the grace of God, a very good aspect of it, we will adopt, so we may likely be going into a modified TSA that will not impact negatively on our commercial banks,” he said.
On the Independent Power Project (IPP) project, Okowa, who washed his hands off any underhand dealings in the project that cost over N19 billion and still remained uncompleted, said, “Yes, I was SSG when the project was awarded, but I was not directly involved in the award of the project. I was neither Commissioner for Energy nor was I directly involved in anything that concerns the project. I can pride myself that I did not receive one kobo for the project and that is why I can speak authoritatively and with a very clear conscience concerning the IPP project.”
