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The National Assembly has expressed anger with the National Pension Commission (PenCom) over what it described as arbitrary spending of over N12.283 billion internally generated revenue (IGR) without the approval of the Legislature.
Senate and the House of Representatives Joint Committees on Pensions made their feelings known during the 2019 budget implementation and 2020 budget defence co-chaired by Ibrahim Shekarau (Senate) and Ibrahim Rurum (Reps).
Members of the Committees including, Ali Ndume, Nicholas Ossai, Babatunde Salam, Senator Ubok Anang who were visibly angry frowned at the refusal of the Commission to submit its IGR to the National Assembly for appropriation.
They also faulted the PENCOM Director General to statement that the Secretary to the Government of the Federation approved the proposal on the utilisation of the IGR accrued to the Agency, contrary to section 21 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2007 and Section 80(4) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended).
The lawmakers therefore, demanded for the details of the 386 staff who collect about N9 billion salaries estimated at average of N2 million monthly per staff.
In the documents presented to the joint Committees, a total sum of N12.283 billion was realized by the Commission between January and 31st August 2019 out of which N8.264 billion has so far been expended on personnel cost, overheads cost and capital expenditure within the period under review.
This is just as the Commission is expected to generate total sum of N16.676 billion by the year ending 31st December, 2019 from registration fees and penalties while its expenditure for 2019 is also expzcted to hit N15.370 billion by 31st December, 2019.
Breakdown of the expenditure indicated that total sum of N5.917 billion has been spent on personnel cost against the budget sum of N11.066 billion; N2.288 billion spent on overhead cost against N5.916 billion budgeted while N58.89 million spent so far on capital expenditure against N1.984 billion on capital projects budgeted for the Commision foe year 2019.
According to the document, “it is projected that the Commission would generate a total of N19.64 billiin in year 2020, mainly from regulatory fees and other income,” while expenditure items listed above including: Personnel cost, capacity building for staff, seminars and workshops for stakeholders, monitoring and examination activities, capital items and administrative expenses “would amount to N19.44 billion” in year 2020.
Earlier, acting Director General of PENCOM, Aisha Dahiru-Umar disclosed that the Commission recorded total sum of N4.077 billion.operating surplus that can not be utilized due to the non-constitution of the supervising Board.
Dahiru-Umar noted that the National Assembly only has powers to appropriate the sum of N33,307,782.32 subvention released in 2019 to the Commission while the IGR is to be approved by the oSGF.
The Director-General maintained that the Commission is not the custodian of the funds accrued from workers’ pension, adding that the Pension Funds Administrators (PFAs) received and advise the Pension Fund Custodiand (PFCs) on how to manage the funds while the Commission only regulate the operators.
She told the Committees that the sum of N2.998 billion appropriated in 2018 and N1.882 billion as other staff cost were for workers’ allowances while N30 million was earmarked for miscellaneous expenditure minor assets, water dispensers, among others.
James Kwen, Abuja
