SEC under fire over N9 billion frivolous spending

By FRED ITUAH, Abuja

The Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Yuguda Lamido, has come under fire from senators over alleged frivolous spending of revenue it made largely on salaries and emoluments of staff of the Commission.

The Senate Committee on Capital Market said it was wrong for the SEC to have spent almost 90% of revenue made in the 2021 fiscal year on staff salaries and emoluments.

Disagreement between the Commission and the Senate ensued during a presentation made by the SEC Director General to the Committee on Capital Market on Budget Performance of the agency in 2021 and projections for 2022.

The Chairman of the Committee, Ibikunle Amosun, frowned at the expenses made by the Commission from its generated revenues.

‘Your emolument was almost N6 billion out of the N9 billion and other expenses. So, clearly you are spending almost all of the revenue that comes to you on staff emolument and other related things,’ he said.

‘You should give us the number of staff 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 the 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.’

Yuguda 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 budgeted at N13.53 billion but the actual expenditure was N4.063 by the end of June. Our budgeted deficit was N5.173 billion but the actual deficit as at end of September was N2.834 due to funding of it from our reserve.’ (Daily Sun)