The House of Representatives Committee on Finance on Thursday red-flagged and called for in-depth torchlighting into the salary structure of the National Pension Commission (PenCom).
This follows a discovery that the commission budgeted N12.02 billion for staff salary and N2.5 billion for other staff costs for 2022.
During the interactive session on the Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper which held on Thursday, the Director-General of PenCom, Aisha Dahiru-Umar, in her submission, said the ,”commission had 500 staff but had to pay them a competitive salary to ensure they are not compromised.”
According to her, the commission cannot afford to have staffers that are vulnerable to compromise, hence the need for training, capacity building and competitive salary.
“The commission has to source and retain highly trained staff. We have to build capacity. We have to train our staff. That is one of the expenses. We have to train them. We have to avoid what is known as regulatory capture. What this means is that our staff will compromise.
“As we are now when we go to examine the operators, we don’t take more than drinking water from them. We don’t compromise because our staff are well paid. We must earn more than the entity we regulate,” Mrs Dahiru-Umar told the lawmakers.
Concerned about the DG’s submission, a member of the Committee, Aminu Suleiman (APC, Kano), did a crude calculation with N12.02 billion and 500 staff. Based on the calculation, the lawmaker said he discovered that on average, a staffer of PenCom earns N2.4 million monthly.
However, Ms Dahiru-Umar who disagreed with the calculation of the lawmaker and said the item highlighted encompasses all allowances, including training.
“Personnel cost is not restricted to salaries; we have about 14 items here. The salaries, the allowances—both the training, allowances and others come under this. Nobody earns a million in PenCom from the DG downward. Maybe we are doing it wrongly. However, we categorize everything as personnel cost,’ she explained.
Dissatisfied with her explanation, Mr Suleiman drew the attention of Mrs Dahiru-Umar to a document she submitted, which, according to him, stated specifically that the N12 billion was for salaries. He, therefore, moved a motion that the commission should provide the details of the salaries of the commission.
“Everyone knows what constitutes personnel cost. This is a personal emolument to personnel. You cannot bring other components of your expenses here. I will ask that she supply the details of the per head of all the staff,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Deputy Chairman of the Committee, Saidu Abdulahi (APC, Niger), concurred and then ruled that the commission should provide the needed details of salaries and emolument within one week as ultimatum
Truthlive.net gathered from premium times that though Mr Suleiman had said that PenCom budgeted N12.3 billion, the document submitted by the commission to the committee and sighted by PREMIUM TIMES, shows that the actual approved budget of the commission for salaries in 2022 was N15,346,628,233.05 and N2,511,497,822 for other costs.
Also, the figure cited by Mr Suleiman is the MTEF projected figure, which is not the same thing as the actual approved figure.
Pencom is expected to generate N26.23 billion in 2022 and remit N2.6 billion to the Consolidated Revenue Fund.