‘Furniture, housing, transport’ — CBN staff allowances gulped N155bn in 2022

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) says staff allowances gulped N155.63 billion in 2022.

The bank disclosed this in its audited financial statements for 2016-2022 released on Thursday.

The regulator said the financial statements of the last seven years — posted on its website — had been approved by its board in accordance with the provisions of the CBN Act of 2007.

According to the report, the staff allowances include furniture, housing, leave, transport, productivity allowances and “others paid to staff during the period”.

The figure is N90 billion higher than CBN’s recorded profit of N65.63 billion within the period examined, TheCable Index analyses show.

It is also 37.2 percent more than the N113.35 billion spent on staff allowances in 2021.

Further checks of the financial statement show that the bank also spent the sum N40.66 billion on staff loans in 2022.

The amount is 133.3 percent higher than the N17.42 billion loan disbursed to staff in 2021.

CBN did not provide details on the number of staff members who were beneficiaries of the loan.

But information on its website provides insight into the bank’s current staff strength.

“…from a bank-wide staff strength of 10,000 staff, excluding the over 2,000 casuals in the HQ and branches as at 1999, the bank operates with a substantially reduced staff strength of and (sic) 4,914 by December 2005, further down from 6,119 as at December 2004. It should be noted further that 79 percent of current staff are now professionals,” the firm said.

Meanwhile, the CBN is currently facing an investigation of its operations.

Last month, President Bola Tinubu appointed Jim Obazee, former chief executive officer of the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria, as a special investigator to probe the CBN and related entities.

The development had followed the arrest of Godwin Emefiele, the erstwhile CBN governor, who had been on the radar of the Department of State Services (DSS) since 2022 over alleged terrorism financing.