The Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) says it is considering reducing staff cost to make the commission more sustainable and improve on its revenue.
The Director General of SEC, Mr Lamido Yuguda made this known at an investigative hearing on revenue monitoring organised by the House Committee on Finance on Tuesday in Abuja.
Yuguda who was represented by the Executive Commissioner, Corporate Services, Mr Ibrahim Boyi, said the management and board of SEC were considering two options to salvage the commission.
According to him, 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-widen the revenue of the commission, two is to also how to reduce the cost of the commission.
“Unfortunately, almost 80 per cent of our cost is staff 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 are from senior managers; so that is the mandate I think we have taken as management and the board and I am sure in the matter of a few months, we will be able to come with a solution.
“The idea really is to make the commission more sustainable and make sure that our revenue is going forward,’’ he said.
He, however, said that SEC had fully reconciled its account with the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation up to 2018 saying that 2019 and 2020 was still ongoing.
The Deputy Chairman of the committee, Rep. Saidu Abdullahi (APC-Niger) said that what the committee is interested in was to make sure it generates revenue for the country in line with its mandate adding that
He said that a situation where all monies generated by revenue agencies are spent on running cost without remitting to the federation account was unacceptable.
“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 spent everything, I think, is not something that in this age and era and should not be acceptable to us, so you need to take that back home,’’ he said.
