2024 budget: EFCC proposes N1.9bn for foreign trips, N2.6bn for vehicles

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is proposing to spend N2.6 billion for the procurement of vehicles in 2024.

The antigraft agency is also seeking N1.9 billion for some staff members, including Ola Olukoyede, its chairman, as estacodes for international travels in the next fiscal year.

According to the commission’s 2024 budget breakdown document seen by TheCable, while the agency is proposing N16 billion for foreign trips, the budget office only approved N607 million.

The budget office further slashed the N2.6 billion earmarked for the purchase of vehicles to N413.7 million.

Explaining why the agency’s budget should be increased, Olukoyede, who appeared before the house representatives committee on financial crimes on Tuesday, said EFCC needs more resources to execute its mandates to avoid criticism from Nigerians and the parliament for performing below expectations.

“From the realistic point of view, what we think 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 told the lawmakers.

“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 that we think will suffice for us to operate in the year 2024.”

Olukoyede said the commission’s total budget estimate for 2024 is N76.586 billion, while the budget office reduced it to N43.109 billion.

He said N37.074 billion of the total budget will be earmarked for personnel costs.

For overhead costs, the EFCC chairman said the budget office pegged it at N4.794 billion but the commission wants it increased to N14.513 billion to help the agency carry out its mandate.

He said the commission is proposing N25 billion as capital cost because the N1.241 billion approved by the budget office “will not do anything” for the agency.

According to the anti-corruption chief, the 2024 proposed estimate of N76.586 billion represents a 53.48 percent increase above the 2023 appropriation of N49.901 billion.

“This increase is solely attributable to the increase in personnel cost from N36.834 billion to N37.074 billion in 2024,” he said.

“Of course, our operation keeps expanding and we also envisage that we are going to bring in more staff in the year under review. We have overhead cost from N10.535 billion to N14.513 billion in 2024 and capital cost from N2.531 billion to N25 billion in 2024. This has come about because of the expansive projects we are going to embark on.

“Quite a number of our zonal offices are in rented apartments and of course when you are doing this kind of work it is not expedient for you to operate in a rented apartment. So we intend to get our own building across our 14 zonal offices where we operate outside Abuja.”

OTHER ITEMS 

The commission also wants the items below approved in 2024 budget

• Local travel and training — N2.8 billion
• Purchase of furniture and fittings — N988,769,178
• Purchase of scanners — N41,350,000
• Purchase of power generating set — N600,000,000
• Purchase of office building — N1.5 billion