The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has proposed a budget estimate of N76.59bn for the 2024 financial year.
According to The PUNCH, the chairman of the commission, Ola Olukoyede, disclosed these on Tuesday at an interface with the House of Representatives Committee on Financial Crime while defending the EFCC budget estimates for 2024.
Olukoyede said, “The commission’s total budget proposal for 2024 is N76.59bn. The 2024 proposed estimate of N76.59bn, represents a 53.48 per cent increase over and above the 2023 Appropriation of N49.91 bn. This increase is solely attributed to the increase in personnel cost from N36.83bn in 2023 to N37.07bn in 2024.
“Under budgetary heads, we have the personnel, overhead and the capital. In our proposal for 2024, we have proposed N37.07bn against an envelope of the same amount of N37.07bn. We still maintained the amount we had in the envelope, in personnel costs.
“Under overhead, the envelope was N4.79bn, but we are proposing to this committee to help us to carry out our mandate, with the sum of N14.51bn.
“Under our capital cost, we have an envelope of N1.24bn, which will not do anything for us. As a result, we are proposing N25bn as our capital cost,” he said.
He premised the demand for increased capital spending on the growth of the commission, saying, “Our operations keep expanding and we also envisaged that we are going to bring in more staff in the year (2024) under review.”
The EFCC boss further revealed the commission’s overhead cost in 2024 as N14.5bn up from N10.53bn in 2023 and N25bn capital expenditure up from N2.5bn in 2023.
“Quite a number of our zonal offices are rented apartments, and of course, when you are doing this kind of work, it’s not expedient for you to operate in rented apartments. We intend to have our buildings across the 14 zonal offices we operate, outside Abuja.
“The request for additional overhead is because of the high cost of air travel tickets, motor vehicles costs, diesel cost, building maintenance, operational vehicles, office equipment, acquisition of our properties and maintenance of our operations in other 14 zonal commands apart from Abuja,” he said.
