Senate Public Accounts Committee (SPAC, has queried the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) over N960 million personnel cost in 2022 budget for 43 members of staff.
The executive secretary of NEITI, Dr Orji Ogbonnaya, appeared before the committee to present his 2023 budget for the first time.
Orji had read the 2022 budget performance to the committee, saying the personnel cost of the agency would be N960 million while overhead cost is N760.9 million and the capital budget is N344 million.
He said 51 percent of personnel cost had been spent while 58 percent of overhead cost has been spent and only 50 percent of capital has been released so far.
But, the chairman of the committee, Senator Mathew Urhoghide, in his response wondered how the agency could spend only 51 percent of its personnel cost as at November 2022, adding this was the case of over bloated personnel cost in the agency.
He said, “You have only taken 51 percent of your personnel cost in November, your personnel cost is really too high, you have only two months, you have just collected 51 percent of your personnel cost.”
“This is one case of an over bloated personnel budget, what we are dating is that it is systemic leakage. We are going to reduce your personnel cost to less than N500 million,” he said.
In his response, the NEITI boss said when the agency started operations, it was only on oil and gas, but now, it has moved into solid minerals and needs more manpower to carry out its operations.
The agency currently had 43 staff members, he said.
Ogbonnaya said NEITI had approval to recruit more employees and this was made available in the 2022 budget and the process has just been concluded.
He added that the newly recruited 70 employees had been captured in IPPIS but were yet to be paid.
However, Senator Ibrahim Danbaba asked NEITI to submit the nominal role of the agency to ascertain what he told the lawmakers.
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