Wonders they say, shall never end. Otherwise, how would anyone justify the display of ignorance by theSubsidy Reinvestment Empowerment Programme(SURE-P) that doesn’t know the 3000 beneficiaries of its refused programme?
For over two months, Senate has asked SURE-P to produce the lists of 3000 unemployed graduates from each state in the country benefiting N10,000 monthly from the programme totaling over N11.2 billion annually, yet the agency is yet to come up with the list.
Chairman of the committee, Senator Abdul Lingin gave the hint during interactive meeting with Director General of Budget Office, Dr. Bright Okogu.
He said the committee cannot go further until SURE-P produced the lists of the beneficiaries of the programme across the federation.
Lingi said: “We asked SURE-P to provide the list of 3000 youths benefiting in each states collecting N10,000 monthly, up to two months now, we have not received anything. We are not aware that the programme is on and we cannot go further until we are given documentation of people who are collecting money from SURE-P per month.
” We want to see how this programme is impacting to the general public like the issue of the 3000 graduates scheme, let us see these names, we have asked members to verify these people are from their constituencies , we will do a random sampling on some of these beneficiaries, I think we cannot stay and assumed 3000 people benefiting from it per state.”
Okogu however, assured the committee that he would demanded for the lists of people collecting N 10,000 monthly from SURE-P.
Lingi insisted that the Minister of Finance and coordinating Minister of Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iwella should appear before the committee to give account of her stewardship.
He said the committee that the N27 billion removed from SURE-P budget has not restored into their budget.