SUBSIDY REINVESTMENT AND EMPOWERMENT PROGRAMME (SURE-P) AS ANOTHER CESSPIT OF CORRUPTION

06/12/12

SUBSIDY REINVESTMENT AND EMPOWERMENT PROGRAMME (SURE-P) AS ANOTHER CESSPIT OF CORRUPTION

Dr. Christopher Kolade Chairman of (SURE-P) board

Following in the aftermath of the nationwide Occupy Nigeria streets protest by Nigerians against the hike in price per litre of petrol by the Goodluck Jonathan administration in January 2012, and desperate to assuage the feelings and sensibilities of Nigerians that it had assaulted by the anti people’s policy, the government hurriedly set up a committee with the name Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) to in its words make meaningful impact to alleviate the plight of Nigerians by managing the gains of the fuel subsidy removal. Prior to the inauguration of the (SURE-P) program, a perusal and discussion of its policy document revealed a hollow programme without specifics on how to achieve its goals and this made a lot of Nigerians to write it off as another white elephant project.

However, Mr. President on February 13^th 2012 inaugurated the board of the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) under the leadership of Dr. Christopher Kolade with the mandate to among other things be an intervention programme designed to employ 370,000 youths in the year 2012 with 30% of those jobs being reserved for women.

Thus, we were not surprised to learn that in its presentation before the National Assembly committee on Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) on Thursday November 28^th 2012 as reported in almost all the dailies on 29^th November 2012 that it had expended N32.482 billion without corresponding impact on the overall wellbeing of Nigerians and the country between January and September 2012.

The incompetence and incapacity of the board was exposed in its lack of clarity of its N180 billion 2012 budget expenditure analysis which made the National Assembly to defer its 2013 budget put at N275 billion till the following week. It could not explain in concrete terms how it expended its 2012 budgetary allocations and was just making claims to projects which to the mind of many are spurious and fraudulent. How can the SURE-P board claim it spent N16 billion on the Benin Ore Shagamu road and the citizenry cannot see the impact? Is it on the entire stretch of the road or a part, and if so, which part and to whom was it awarded and when? The board could not satisfactorily come up with credible details of its work design, tenders and financial procedure. It also could not provide details of actual figures of mass transit buses bought and where they are located now? That the (SURE-P) programme is without direction is a fact or else it should have been able to explain in details how it has fared in meeting its mandate of creating 370,000 jobs in 2012 alone? This (SURE-P) programme if not re-examined now will sooner or later become another goldmine for looting the treasury.

What the (SURE-P) board has done by duplicating the projects of Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government who have constitutional responsibilities and have been appropriated funds by the National Assembly to carry out those functions amounts to fraud which should be investigated.

However, one is indeed glad that members of the National Assembly in being responsive to the wishes and aspirations of the people didn’t mince words in expressing the frustration and disappointment of Nigerians with the duplication of Ministries, Departments and Agencies projects which were claimed to have been carried out by the SURE-P board when in actual fact such projects had been appropriated for in the 2012 budget. The lawmaker’s condemnation of the SURE-P measures is a confirmation of the long held view of Nigerians of it at inception as one without no direction and another conduit pipe for corruption.

That the (SURE-P) programme was not a well thought and conceived one but an image laundry and corruption soap opera can be seen in the way the board lacked focus in the manner it has gone about its activities with the huge sums of money at its disposal. Thus, there is every need for the National Assembly to prevent it from further frittering away our scarce human and material resources into private pockets and thus aborting the unclear vision of creating 370, 000 youth’s employment in 2012 which in the first place was not specifically captured in its vision statement as analyzed by experts.

If the present administration is indeed serious in tackling corruption, it is my candid opinion that members of the board should be made to face a commission of inquiry to verify this bogus claim of intervention projects just like we have done with the fuel subsidy management which unearthed a can of worms or else it should be assumed that the SURE-P programme is another jobs for the boys.

It is also my view that the National Assembly should pass a legislation now before any budget presentation by the (SURE-P) management reviewing and overhauling the mandate and composition of the board with a view to making it responsible, transparent, focused and accountable and thus arresting the cesspit of corruption that the board is becoming under the headship of Dr. Christopher Kolade whose hard earned integrity is being called to question.