By Kayode Tokede
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has said that it is considering a reduction in its operational staff cost to boost and improve its revenue profile.
SEC’s Director General, Mr Lamido Yuguda said in Abuja on Tuesday at an investigative hearing on revenue monitoring organised by the House Committee on Finance that the management and board of SEC were considering two options to salvage the Commission from its financial crunch.
Represented by the Executive Commissioner, Corporate Services, Mr Ibrahim Boyi, he said management and board of SEC were considering two options to salvage the Commission from its financial crunch.
He said, “Unfortunately for SEC, for 2019, 2020 and this year, we are likely to end up with some deficits because of revenue shortfall.
“There are two approaches; one is to see how to boost or widen the revenue of the Commission, while the other is to see how to reduce the running cost of the Commission.
“Unfortunately, almost 80 per cent of our cost is personnel cost; so we need to find a way of chopping off that cost and I think work is already going on.
“We are top heavy. Almost 50 per cent of our staff is from senior managers up.
“The idea really is to make the Commission more sustainable and make sure that our revenue is going forward,’’ he said.
Yuguda said, however, that SEC had fully reconciled its accounts with the office of the Accountant-General of the Federation up to 2018, saying those of 2019 and 2020 were on-going.
Responding, the Deputy Chairman of the committee, Rep. Saidu Abdullahi (APC-Niger) said it was interested in ensuring that the Commission lived up to its statutory mandate of revenue generation for the country.
He frowned at the situation where all monies generated by revenue generating agencies were expended as running costs without any remittance to the federation account, saying such action was not acceptable.
“Well, we need you to make more money, absolutely; if you want to spend more money, you should make more than what you need to spend.
“A situation where agencies will make more money and spend everything at this age and era is not acceptable to us. So, you need to take that back home,’’ he said.
The deputy chairman urged the SEC leadership to quickly conclude reconciliation of its accounts for 2019 and 2020 fiscal years to enable the committee to take critical decisions.