Senate’s joint committee on Finance and National Planning has queried the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, for expending N10billion on salaries of less than 600 staffers of the commission.
The committee chairman, Senator Olamilekan Adeola, issued the query on Tuesday when the SEC Director-General. Lamido Yuguda, appeared before it on revenue projections of the commission for the 2021 budget.
Mr Adeola (APC Lagos West), therefore, ordered the agency to unfailingly remit N300million into the Consolidated revenue fund, CRF, latest by Thursday next week.
Earlier, Mr Yuguda had told the committee that the agency had generated about N4billion revenue in 2019 but only N86.835million was remitted into the Federation Account.
Piqued by the wide gap between revenue generated and remittance made, Senator Adeola sought for comments from the Accountant-General of the Federation, AGF, Ahmed Idris, on the performance index of SEC.
The AGF, in his response, said the N86.835million remitted into CRF by SEC in 2019 from the N4billion revenue generated, was grossly low.
” The least of such remittance expected from SEC from N4billion revenue is N846million , meaning that the agency is owing the federal government N760million “, he said .
Infuriated by the disclosure made by the AGF, the committee members took up the SEC Boss on why whopping N10billion is being expended on salaries of less than 600 staffers of the agency on yearly basis.
According to Mr Adeola, the N10billion when spread on 600 staffers, shows that each of the staff of the agency collects N15.7million per annum.
“This is unacceptable for a country seriously looking for more revenues internally to fund its budget,” he said .
But the DG, in his response, said he met the agency as a ‘top heavy Organization’ which, according to him, very difficult to give critical review with the required urgency.
