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Home   >   Goverment   >   Arunma Oteh Clashes with Lawmakers over N 850,000 Food Expenditure Bill

Arunma Oteh Clashes with Lawmakers over N 850,000 Food Expenditure Bill

By on March 15, 2012

Tempers flared during the House Committee on Capital Markets headed by Herman Hembe sitting yesterday. The Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), MS. Arunma Oteh was grilled by members of the committee on various issues that undoubtedly caused the capital markets top regular discomfort.

Most startling were the allegations that the DG had spent as much as N 30 million on hotel bills in 8 months following her sealing the plum job, including a one-day expense of N 850,000 for food. All paid for with tax payers money.

The lawmakers also queried her unilateral appointment of two Access Bank staff as consultants to her office. The Access Bank employees, Charles Ugheli and Titi Olubiyi were hired in 2010 against the advice of SEC legal and Human Resources departments.

Hembe expressed his displeasure on the development stating, “Worse still, these employees are still workers of Access Bank. They are paid salaries by Access Bank, but work for SEC.

“This smacks of plenty fraud and the regulation by SEC is impaired by bias and incompetence.”

Oteh claimed the SEC did not have the capacity to use its own employees for the positions assigned to the Access Bank staff.

She explained, ““Ugheli is on secondment from Access Bank as projector adviser; his job has nothing to do with our work as regulators.”

The House Committee has queried Oteh’s failure to see the fallacy in her actions in relationship to her leadership of SEC.

Hembe said, “We will look into your competence as DG of SEC. You will bring all your certificates that qualified you for this job tomorrow and the letter of request to Access Bank for these employees and their schedule of duty.”

2 Comments

  1. ALEX B. OBELLA

    March 15, 2012 at 7:02 pm

    If N30million is spent on Hotel bill in eight months & food for a day is N850,000, Then Oteh is expected to mis-manage over N200 million tax payers money in 2years. I recommend that she should vacate the office on her own before she would be embarrass to do so, because as it is going, i see the arrow coming already. Alex B.O

  2. ALEX B. OBELLA

    March 15, 2012 at 7:02 pm

    If N30million is spent on Hotel bill in eight months & food for a day is N850,000, Then Oteh is expected to mis-manage over N200 million tax payers money in 2years. I recommend that she should vacate the office on her own before she would be embarrass to do so, because as it is going, i see the arrow coming already. Alex B.O