The increasing digitalisation of public-sector financial administration has created new opportunities for strengthening transparency, efficiency, and accountability in secondary school management. This study examined the relationship among digital financial management, leadership skills, and financial accountability among principals of public secondary schools in South East Nigeria. Specifically, the study investigated whether principals’ digital financial literacy, adoption of digital financial tools, and compliance with digital financial policies relate to financial accountability directly and indirectly through leadership skills. The study was anchored on Digital Leadership Theory and Resource Dependency Theory. A quantitative cross-sectional survey design was adopted, with data obtained from 206 principals of public secondary schools across Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo States. Digital financial management was operationalised through digital financial literacy, adoption of digital tools, and digital policy compliance, while leadership skills were measured through transformational financial leadership, accountability and transparency leadership, and data-driven decision-making. Financial accountability was assessed using financial planning and budgeting effectiveness, financial reporting and record keeping, and overall financial accountability and management. Descriptive analysis indicated generally high levels of digital financial management, leadership competence, and financial accountability. Digital financial literacy recorded the highest mean (M = 4.04), while financial planning and budgeting effectiveness recorded the lowest substantive mean (M = 3.54). Inspection of the supplied data, however, revealed deterministic linear relationships among the substantive variables, producing perfect or near-perfect collinearity. Consequently, the proposed mediation effect could not be independently identified without overstating the inferential evidence. The study concludes that digital financial competence, leadership capability, and financial accountability are closely connected dimensions of contemporary school administration, while recommending stronger budgeting capacity, data-driven decision-making, digital policy compliance, electronic audit trails, and integrated leadership and digital-finance development.