By Olasunkanmi Onifade
The Registrar and Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Treasury Management (CITM), Dr Adedoyin Olumide, has urged the Federal Government to partner with the institute to strengthen Nigeria’s public financial management system.
Olumide made the call at the institute’s Mandatory Continuous Professional Training, induction and recertification programme on Wednesday in Abuja.
He said the event, themed “Financial Management Integration: Aligning Tax, Budgeting and Treasury for National Development,” was aimed at building capacity and promoting best practices in financial governance.
“We want to play the role of advocacy, advisory and support to government in creating a financial management system that aligns tax processes, budgeting and treasury operations for national development,” he said.
“You cannot take away tax processes or treasury functions, but they must be properly aligned to avoid budgets that cannot be implemented.”
In an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria(NAN), Olumide urged the Federal Government to prioritise inclusive budgeting by engaging stakeholders and aligning revenue sources with community needs.
According to him, effective treasury management must address leakages and wastage, adding that continuous training and retraining of personnel is critical to achieving efficiency.
Olumide noted that allowing professional bodies like CITM to support training and policy development would significantly reduce fraud and misapplication of public resources.
“Once CITM is allowed to partner with government, about 85 per cent of what we call fraud will be a thing of the past,” he said, attributing past issues such as ghost workers to lapses in financial management systems.
Also speaking, the Chairman, Board of Fellows of the institute, Dr Mohamed Buba, emphasised the need for stronger stakeholder engagement across all stages of public financial management.
He said integrating budget formulation, execution and treasury operations would enhance transparency and accountability.
“Once you have it integrated, everything would be excellent, but if treated in a disaggregated form, it becomes a problem,” he said. (NAN)
Edited by Tosin Kolade
