The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has asked the National Assembly to increase its 2024 budgetary allocation from N43 billion to N76 billion.
This was contained in the budget synopsis presented by the Commission’s Chairman, Ola Olukoyede, to the House of Representatives Committee on Financial Crimes on Tuesday.
According to the document sighted by NewMailNG, the Budget Office proposed N43.1 billion for the commission with a breakdown of N37 billion as personnel cost, N4.7 as overhead and N1.2 billion for capital projects.
However, the EFCC proposed N76.5 billion with a capital component of N25 billion, overhead pegged at N14.5 billion and personnel cost at N37 billion.
In a further breakdown, the commission proposed N2.6 billion for the procurement of vehicles in 2024 and another N1.7 billion for international travels.
But the budget office, in its final approval, removed the N2.6 billion for vehicles, N11 billion proposed for the construction of offices and N2.6 billion for security equipment.
It also slashed the proposal for foreign trips to N 563.2 million from the N1.7 billion proposed proposed by the EFCC.
Justifying the need for the lawmakers to increase the EFCC budget, Olukoyede said the commission needs more resources to execute its mandates so as not to be criticised by Nigerians and the parliament for performing below expectations.
“From the realistic point of view, what we think is, it will be good for us to work…because if we ‘manage’ to investigate and prosecute crime, you (lawmakers) will also ‘manage’ to abuse us that we are not working,” he said.
“So, we don’t want to receive such an attack (criticisms) from you and we don’t want to ‘manage’. That is why we increased it (capital expenditure) to N25 billion which we think will suffice for us to operate in the year 2024,” he added.
Olukoyede said the commission is proposing N25 billion as capital cost because the N1.241 billion proposed by the budget office “will not do anything” for the agency.
The committee subsequently moved into an executive session to deliberate on the proposal.
NFIU defends budget
Meanwhile, the Director-General of the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), Modibbo Tukur, also appeared before the committee to defend the budget of his agency.
Speaking on the budget, Ginger Onwusibe (LP, Abia), chairman of the committee, said the panel will look at the proposal of the antigraft agency and make recommendations.
Onwusibe asked the NFIU to collaborate with the committee in information sharing.
However, Tukur refused to speak in the presence of the media, stating that their work requires some level of “secrecy”.
The committee also went into a closed-door session.
