Chairman of the Senate Committee on Capital Market Ibikunle Amosun, yesterday queried alleged spending of N8 billion out of N9 billion Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on workers’ salaries and emoluments.
Amosun spoke when the SEC Director-General, Yuguda Lamido, appeared before the committee to defend the 2022 budget estimates of the agency.
Lamido has in his presentation said: “A total of N11.5 billion was projected as revenue for 2021 out of which N2.689 billion was realised as at June with the hope of making more before the year runs out.
“Total recurrent expenditure for 2021 was projected at N13.53 billion, but the actual expenditure was N4.063 billion by the end of June.
“Our projected deficit was N5.173 billion, but the actual deficit as at end of September was N2.834 billion following augmentation from our reserve.
“Though revenue performance is still weak, series of innovations like newly introduced charges for secondary investors will boost it from the 2022 fiscal year and beyond.
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“In giving room for more financial inflow, we are planning to retire about 152 top management staff with fat salaries and recruit fresh workers with less financial burden on the commission.
“There are measures at reducing expenditure and also measures at increasing revenue of the commission.”
In his reaction, Amosun said: “Your emolument was almost N6 billion out of your N9 billion revenue.
“So, clearly, you are spending almost all of the revenue that comes to you on workers’ emolument and other related things.
“You should give us the number of workers that you have in the commission, such that we need to look at what is happening, if you generate about N9 billion and almost N8 billion is purely for servicing staff.
“You are having a huge deficit of almost N4 billion. When you continuously make this deficit, year in, year out, then something is wrong.”
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