Kolade's Sure P Blew N2.3b For Office Use And Tours In 4 Months

The Federal Government’s Subsidy Reinvestment Programme (SURE-P) has spent N2.2 billion on “secretariat services” and N75 million on “tours” from July to October, according to documents submitted by its chairman Christopher Kolade to the National Assembly in Abuja yesterday.

SURE-P was set up by the government earlier in the year to utilize savings from partial removal of petrol subsidy made in January.

The programme is meant to create jobs and empower people using funds allocated monthly from the Federation Account.

Kolade made his submission on the programme’s expenditure yesterday at a budget defence hearing before the National Assembly Joint Committee on Petroleum Resources (Downstream).

The revelation that the SURE-P committee spent billions for office “services” in just four months drew the ire of lawmakers, who asked Kolade to explain exactly what the monies were spent on.

Committee member Senator Benedict Ayade, who brought out the two expenditures from the documents Kolade submitted, said, “It is unacceptable to tell us you’ve spent N2.2bn on your secretariat and N75m on tours in just four months without providing the details. We must know places where you travelled to and how many of you embarked on those journeys. We must also know the details of the spending on your secretariat.”

Responding, Kolade explained that the N75million spent on travels was used for projects’ inspection across the country.

But he did not have details on the N2.2 billion office services spending, which he promised to provide later.

Apparently dissatisfied with Kolade’s explanation, chairman of the session Senator Magnus Abe said, “It is clear that some of your expenditures are questionable, while your explanations are unsatisfactory. We can’t work with figures without details. Give us documents to show us how you spent the money. You’ve also not told us the details of how much you claimed to have received from donour agencies.”

Kolade’s committee was also criticised for awarding N58 billion railway contracts to foreign companies, an action which Senator Ayade described as contrary to SURE-P’s promise to create jobs for Nigerians.

“From the paper you gave us, most of the railway projects contractors are multinationals. Spending N58 billion for these multinationals amounts to giving away jobs that ought to have been given to Nigerians,” he said.

“The philosophy of SURE-P is to empower Nigerians. Also, in your subcommittees, you don’t have any committee on agriculture and housing. It means you’re not doing anything on these two important sub-sectors of the economy,” he added.

At this point Senator Abe cut in, warning that funds budgeted for SURE-P must not be seen “as crude oil money that everyone is sharing.”

In his response, Kolade said, “We want the contractors who had started the projects before our intervention to complete the projects. When there are new projects, we’ll look at the philosophy of creating empowerment for Nigerians.”

The National Assembly committee also queried the proposal to spend N27 billion on what Kolade’s committee tagged “Public Works for Youth”.

Senator Olufemi Lanlehin asked Kolade to explain how his committee would go about its plan to employ 5,000 people each from the 36 states including the FCT.

Kolade, who explained that housing and agriculture were not part of the projects lined up for SURE-P, said his committee could not initiate projects outside those identified by the Federal Government.

He said of the 1,200 buses to be purchased with N15 billion, 800 had so far been bought out of which 42 were given to the National Union of Road Transport Workers, and one given to each of the nine Niger Delta states.

Senator Abe also questioned SURE-P’s plan to employ 10,000 workers to patch 3,411 kilometres of roads across the nation.

“Why do you want to use 10,000 people to patch 3,411 km roads? Where are these roads? How much will be spent per kilometre? Is the project real and reasonable? We want to see the details,” Abe said.

Members of the panel also queried the employment of 2,000 midwives and their deployment to the various primary health centres across the nation.

Senator Abe asked whether the midwives would be dumped when SURE-P ceases to exist since Kolade’s committee has no mandate to recruit staff for the states. But Kolade expressed optimism that the states would absorb them.

The document submitted to the panel put the 2013 budget proposal for SURE-P at N273.52billion.