Unspent N4bn in our 2020 budget meant for recruitment – EFCC

The Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) on Wednesday said that the N4 billion unspent in the 2020 budget was meant for recruitment of staff.

TheNewsGuru.com, (TNG) reports the recruitment was stopped due to COVID-19 pandemic that ravaged the entire world at the beginning of the year.

Mr Mohammed Umar, the Acting chairman of the commission said this on Wednesday in Abuja during its budget defence before the House committee on EFCC

According to him, we were in the process of doing the recruitment when COVID-19 took over and that is why we have the N4 billion left unspent.

He said that the EFCC had also made submission to the committee detailing assets recovery, conviction secured, cases in court among others by the commission.

Umar listed some of the challenges faced by the EFCC to include: lack of special court to prosecute corruption cases, lack of personnel, poor release of fund for capital projects among others.

He said that the issue of five per cent meant to be retained in the agency as part of money recovered had not been given to the commission as done in others places.

“I don’t think the five per cent to be retained in EFCC for assets recovery has been approved because we have not gotten any money outside the budget approved,” he said.

The acting chairman however proposed a total of N29.861 billion for 2021 operations.

Umar said that EFCC had 15 offices in the country, adding that it could not captured some states because it was better to equip those already established.

“It is better we equip the 15 offices than acquiring more because some are not adding values to our investigations, so we are thinking of closing them

Rep Zakaria Nyampa (PDP-Adamawa) had queried why the EFCC had N4 billion unspent in the 2020 budget approved for the commission.

” Going through your document in 2020, I discovered there are N4 billion unspent money for personnel and N879 million unused under overhead, I don’t know what you are going to do with this,” he said.

Meanwhile,, Rep Ibrahim Dutse, the chairman of the committee said it was ready to assist the EFCC to do it’s job, adding that any money voted for the commission must be released.

He said that the committee would intervene in any challenges faced by the commission in respect to be able to discharge its duty effectively to the country.