In this report, Jide Babalola, Assistant Editor, takes a look at the behind the scenes reasons why the president last week pulled the rug from under the SURE-P scheme.
Apparently, with the scrapping of the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) by President Muhammadu Buhari this week, it is easy to say that God and the Nigerian citizens who believe that they deserve much more, were not on the same page with those who perpetrated the shenanigans at SURE-P. Probity, transparency and accountability appeared to have taken flight so soon, leaving citizens and the nation’s new leadership with no choice than bidding the SURE-P programme an unceremonious farewell. Moreover, the Senate, on Wednesday, urged President Buhari to investigate all expenditures made under the programme, stressing that the President should ensure that every kobo spent on SURE-P and other poverty alleviation programmes is accounted for.
Other than a broad understanding that mind-boggling billions of Naira has been involved in SURE-P’s operations, it would take a comprehensive government auditing for anyone to even guess the totality of SURE-P disbursements or expenditures. Christopher Kolade, former chairman of the scheme had in 2013 in a newspaper article said the arrangement for its funding is such that “41 per cent of the total fund goes to the Federal Government; 54 per cent is shared by state governments and local governments, while the remaining five per cent is allocated to something called Ecological Fund, which is the Federal Government business.”
Few days ago, a letter from the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) conveyed President Buhari’s order to the SURE-P committee, directing it to shut down its operations and submit a comprehensive report of its activities to the Presidency.
The President also ordered an immediate probe into the activities, funding and expenditure of the agency.
Without the people on its side, SURE-P and the unending speculations about its gross mismanagement of resources seems not to have received the creator’s blessings as its three years’ existence formally ended this week.
Such an abiku existence of less than 47 months is no compliment to an interventionist agency that was expected to use a sure and steady stream of billions of Naira to make an enduring impact on lives of citizens across the Nigerian federation.
Surely, SURE-P has now become a historic footnote in the annals of governance. The noble objectives and citizens’ high expectations along with phenomenal multi-billion Naira expenditures under the SURE-P scheme have yielded little for citizens.
Stakeholders in Abuja affirm that until ongoing efforts for an elaborate probe of its income and expenditure is concluded, it would be unrealistic to even attempt guessing how many billions of Naira was expended on the SURE-P scheme between 2012 when it was created and this month when President Buhari abolished it. Rather, it is safe to say that elements of waste, deliberate sabotage and sheer opportunity and corrupt practices have contributed towards its unceremonious ending.
The Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) was created in 2012 following the nationwide protests that greeted the cut in petroleum subsidy by the Jonathan administration.
The programme was driven by the resources that accrued to the Federal Government as savings from the partial removal of fuel subsidy. Billions of dollars was voted for the body.
The objectives according to the government are:
*To mitigate the immediate impact of the partial petroleum subsidy removal on the population by laying a foundation for the successful development of a national safety net programme that targets the poor and vulnerable on a continuous basis. This applies to both the direct and indirect effects of subsidy withdrawal.
*To accelerate economic transformation through investments in critical infrastructural projects, so as to drive economic growth and achieve the Vision 20:2020.
*To promote investment in the petroleum downstream sector.
However, it seems that no interventionist agency based on the utilization of petro-dollar is immune from the blighted consequences that have always plagued Nigeria’s huge incomes from crude oil. Remember the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) too? PTF had good projects to show for its existence under leadership of General Buhari in the era of the Abacha dictatorship. Yet, the final auditing of its accounts showed that there were unpardonable gaps.
The 21-man Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force under the chairmanship of Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, in its 178-page report exposed how the Presidency, the national oil company, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), under the directive of sundry officials, treat huge oil revenues accruing to the federation as mere slush funds that could be used for whatever purposes without accountability.
In August 2012, World Bank’s ex-Vice President for Africa, Oby Ezekwesili quoted findings which indicate that estimated amount of Nigeria’s oil revenue stolen or misspent since independence in 1960 was more than $400 billion. An April 2012 report at the National Assembly indicated that fuel subsidy scam had cost Nigeria not less than $6.8bn during the preceding two years.
In October, 2012, the Ribadu Task Force whose report was attacked by some top officials indicated that the amount lost by the nation’s treasury in the previous decade as a result of petroleum price-fixing scam should be worth some $29 billion.
At birth, SURE-P was presented to Nigerians as one destined not to suffer such fate or betray citizens’ trust and expectations.
In his speech, President Jonathan noted: “The deregulation of the petroleum sector is a necessary step that we had to take. Should we continue to do things the same way, and face more serious economic challenges? Or deregulate, endure the initial discomfort and reap better benefits later?”
Indeed, opponents of government’s decision to deregulate were overwhelmed by proponents’ arguments.
According to President Jonathan, “To ensure that the funds from petroleum subsidy removal are spent prudently on projects that will build a greater Nigeria, I have established a committee to oversee the implementation of the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P). I sincerely believe that the reinvestment of the petroleum subsidy funds, to ensure improvement in national infrastructure, power supply, transportation, irrigation and agriculture, education, healthcare, and other social services, is in the best interest of our people.”
Although many stakeholders applaud the programme’ s stated objectives, the pattern of its implementation under the chairmanship of three distinguished Nigerians – boardroom chieftain, Christopher Kolade, former Chief of Army Staff, General Martin Luther Agwai, and later, Ishaya Akau – bore some elements of haphazard expenditures and unrealized dreams.
No thanks to wily, unscrupulous bureaucrats, the scheme touted as one of the pivots of the Federal Government’s Transformation Agenda had no really good beginning.
On December 3, 2012 when the SURE-P chairman appeared at the National Assembly, the documents he submitted indicated that the programme had spent N2.2 billion on “secretariat services” and N75 million on “tours” from July to October, 2012 alone.
Early in September 2015 when he reminisced about his time at SURE-P and the circumstances behind his resignation in November 2013, citing advanced age at the time, Kolade told the truth. On “Views from the Top”, a programme anchored on Channels Television by Modele Sarafa-Yusuf, Kolade said that he left because SURE-P’s operations were becoming tainted with corruption and politics, thereby losing its credibility.
According to Kolade, he met stiff resistance and got overruled on some issues he raised, there was “something that was lower than the transparency”, expected of an interventionist agency like SURE-P?.
“I discovered that there were individuals in the system that were practising something that was lower than the transparency that we went in with, I raised the issues. And I discovered that political affiliations and things made this difficult,” he stated.
A September 7, 2015 report by Premium Times, one of Nigeria’s foremost online news channels gave more details, particularly about the instance when Dr. Kolade’s committee decided to employ 5, 000 youth from every state of the federation.
According to him, when it commenced the process it was told the arrangement it adopted was not acceptable.
He said, “We started by saying that we would offer employment to 5000 youths from every state. Of course if you are sitting in Abuja, and you want to identify 5000 youths in all the states, it is difficult unless you involve people who are on the spot.
“Now, it was the feeling of our committee, led by me, that to identify people in the states, we needed people who were politically neutral. In other words, get civil servants to go in there and say according to the criteria you’ve agreed, these are the 5000 youths from this state. But we were told that would not be acceptable.
“So something was set up called State Implementation Committees made up mainly of people with political affiliations with one party or the other. When that was brought into play, I pointed out that I feared this would politicize what we were trying to do. And that therefore I felt we should take politicians out of this. But I was overruled by those who had the power to overrule me.
“And then, it started happening. I got complaints from Abia and Ekiti states that many of the youths being recruited into the programme were supporters of party A or party B and I went back, and said what I suspected is beginning to happen.
“So we need to kill this thing right away and go back to what we agreed. Now, somehow, we couldn’t do that. And for me, if you destroy the foundation on which you are setting up something like that, if you feel that credibility is the key to success in this thing, and then you undermine credibility by politicizing the issues, you are shooting yourself on the foot. And I’m not very good at shooting in the foot because I find out I can’t walk very well after that.”
With such defective foundation, SURE-P had started to wobble from the beginning but real perception-management work in the mass media helped it get by, earning praises from some quarters.
Positive notes
If it were an easy task, the Wind of Hope Foundation, a pro-Jonathan body would love to praise the SURE-P programme to high heavens.
“There is a document called the SURE-P programme which guides the projects that are embarked upon. Most of these projects are in categories; category A is Social safety net; Category B is Niger-Delta Development project; Category C is road infrastructure projects; Category D is rail transport project; Category E is water and agricultural projects; Category F is selected power projects; Category G is Petroleum NNPC Projects; and Category H is ICT projects. Not all these areas have been attended to yet because the subsidy removal was only partial. This explains the reason why President Jonathan had called for full removal of subsidy. If this had been achieved, a lot more would have been achieved and the impact would have been felt across the board. However, this does not mean that the impact has been minimal. Rather, it has been significant in areas where the intervention has been made. If they had succeeded in withdrawing the whole subsidy, all these projects would have been covered in 2012.”
Speaking in Ibadan in January this year, the national coordinator of the Youth Movement for Change (YMC), Lekan Osunleti lauded You-Win and SURE-P as Federal Government’s youth-centred programmes which have contributed to the growth of many small businesses in Nigeria.
In his handover notes to his successor late in May this year, President Goodluck Jonathan said that SURE-P was one of the fundamental aspects of his administration’s initiatives.
“My administration made job creation a key consideration for all programmes in the Transformation Agenda. Emphasis was also shifted towards empowering youths to become entrepreneurs rather than job seekers, through such initiatives as Youth Enterprise with Innovation in Nigeria (YOU-WIN), Graduate Internship Scheme (GIS), the SURE-P Technical Vocational Education and Training Programme (TVET) and the Youth Employment in Agriculture Programme (YEAP)”, he stated.
Indeed, SURE-P was conceptualised to achieve so much through various components. For instance, under MCH, the maternal & child healthcare component of SURE-P was conceptualised to contribute to the reduction of the maternal and new born morbidity and mortality through improved infrastructure and human resources to enhance health service delivery at the primary health care level. Specifically, it aims to refurbish Primary Health Care infrastructure nationwide; increase the number of trained health workers (midwives, community health extension workers (CHEWs) and village health workers (VHWs) to guarantee adequate antenatal attendance, skilled delivery at birth, routine immunization and postnatal care for women and their babies.
Another component, the Graduate Internship Scheme (GIS) aimed towards providing unemployed and underemployed graduate youths with job apprenticeship opportunities that will expose them to skills and experiences relevant to the current labour market and enhance their employability.
However, the SURE-P Railways Project, the Abuja Light Rail & Mass Housing (ALRMH) project and the Niger-Delta East/West Road (NDEWR) project were solely focussed on infrastructural development.
Under SUREP, there was also the Technical & Vocational Education Training (TVET) project.
Negative notes
Within its first year of existence, whispers from the National Assembly about missing N500 billion SURE-P funds that could not be accounted for started when it had an audience with the members of the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme Committee then headed by Dr. Kolade.
Shortly before the Senate Committee on SURE-P began a scheduled meeting with then Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Allison-Madueke and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, a member of the committee, Senator Kabiru Marafa, had disclosed that they were investigating the whereabouts of the funds.
The senator said that the committee wrote the Ministry of Petroleum Resources requesting the quantity of fuel it supplied for consumption since the inception of SURE-P in 2012 which was 21 months (January 2012 to September 30, 2013.)
He noted that the Ministry responded that 25 billion litres of PMS (fuel) was supplied within the period under review.
He said that since N32m was SURE-P component of oil subsidy, the committee multiplied 25 billion litres of PMS the Ministry supplied by N32 which gave about N800 billion.
The lawmaker added that the leadership of SURE-P had at a meeting with the Senate Committee put the total money released for SURE-P activities at N300 billion.
He said that SURE-P also told the committee that it receives N15 billion monthly for its activities.
According to him, “since SURE-P claimed that it received a total of N300 billion, it means that N500 billion that should have accrued to SURE-P is missing.
“We are curious to know what happened to the N500 billion. We also want to know why CBN has been remitting N15 billion to SURE-P monthly. This is because the releases to SURE-P should have varied according to PMS consumption but we hear that N15 billion is remitted to SURE-P monthly.”
However, Dr. Kolade later dismissed the allegation on the alleged missing funds.
“The person or the people who started this rumour said they were aware from NNPC sources that about N800billion should have accrued to SURE-P fund since the beginning and that when my committee appeared before them, all we were able to account for was about N300 billion… My committee can only speak about N300 billion and by the end of the year we will be talking about N360 billion but at the point of discussion, we can only talk about N300 billion.
“We are responsible for only 41 per cent. So, the remaining 59 per cent for states, among others is where that N500billion go. Therefore, for anyone to say it is missing or unaccounted for, it’s all falsehood”, he stated.
During the period, the Federal Government also issued a statement, indicating that no N500 billion was missing.
Nonetheless, allegations of magical disappearance, mismanagement and non-transparent disbursement of humongous sums continued to trail the operations of SURE-P.
There was no tangible effort to controvert allegations that SURE-P had spent N2.2 billion on “secretariat services” and N75 million on “tours” between July and October, 2012. Later, it lost the image of a serious interventionist agency and took the colouration of one that merely exists for disbursing political slush funds across the federation.
For instance, a report published by this newspaper on May 22, this year detailed unusual intrigues that accompanied the disbursement of N2. 7 billion SURE-P funds in Kaduna State.
The Clerk of the Kaduna State House of Assembly, Umma Aliyu Hikima, was under pressure to sign and approve the spending of N2.744 billion local governments’ Subsidy Reinvestment Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) funds by Governor Mukhtar Ramalan Yero who wrote, asking for an approval to spend the 2014 SURE-P funds for the 23 local governments just days before his exit from power.
While the governor got the approval of some key principal officers of the Assembly, 14 members rejected the letter on the ground that the Executive could not give satisfactory reasons on how it would spend the funds, less than two weeks to the expiration to its tenure.
The 14 lawmakers described the governor’s request as “gross financial recklessness and last-minute looting and squandering of public funds.”
The Clerk’s inability to sign the approval, sources said, was premised on the fact that the 2014 SURE-P funds was not even in the state’s 2015 budget.
Citizens in the state felt a bit relieved when then Governor-elect, Nasir El-Rufai threatened to investigate and punish anyone culpable in the SURE-P funds’ diversion.
In Benue State, Judicial Panel of Inquiry into the sales of government property and shares constituted by Governor Samuel Ortom and headed by Justice Margaret Kpojime discovered, in September this year, that over N7.7 billion Subsidy Reinvestment Program, SURE-P funds which accrued to Benue State government from the federation account under the immediate past administration has remained unaccounted for.
The state’s Head of Service, (HOS) Mr. Inwanta Adaikwu who was represented by the Permanent Secretary, Administration Mr. Joseph Oko told the panel that though the HOS was the chairman of the programme in the state, the office lacked knowledge of its financial transactions.
Oko also said the HOS’ office which served as the secretariat of the SURE-P committee set up by the government only received N25 million from the scheme as remittance for training of participants.
“The office of the Head of Service who served as the chairman of the secretariat of the Sure-P committee did not have access to the details of the funds allocated to the state since its inception” he said, adding that even though federal allocations under SURE-P was first disbursed to Benue State in May 2012, the scheme was only inaugurated two years afterwards on October 24, 2014.
Speaking at Babcock University in Ilishan-Remo, Ogun State on June 1, last year, then Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala noted that the National Bureau of Statistics indicated that about 1.2 million jobs were created in 2013, adding that the Federal Government’s special programmes, including SURE-P made small impact.
“The government’s special intervention programmes have also created jobs, such as: YouWiN (27,000 jobs) and the SURE-P Community Services Scheme (120,000 jobs)” she stated.
In October 2012, the Federal Ministry of Finance’s mandate to provide short term employment for graduates manifested in the Graduate Internship Scheme (GIS), a social safety net component of Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P).
The GIS scheme which aimed to improve the employability of up to 50,000 unemployed graduates across the nation through internship programmes in pre-selected institutions was to pay N18, 000 to beneficiaries every month but it is very doubtful if achieved more than a tiny fraction of its target.
There is no doubt that corruption which remains the bane of development in most Third World countries has scuttled the lofty dreams which Nigeria’s SURE-P programme was meant to realize.
Just in September last year, the Abuja-based Centre for Social Justice added its voice to citizens’ call for more transparency in the management of the SURE-P programme by enabling the people to determine the actual level of its impact.
CSJ’s Lead Director, Mr Eze Onyekpere made the call during the unveiling of a report on the implementation of the SURE-P programme
He said while the SURE-P funds at the federal level have made appreciable impact, the implementation of the program and utilization of funds at the state and local government levels are not separately budgeted and accounted for.
“The fund simply goes into the normal funds of the state and through regular appropriation and expenditure process.
“This creates doubts about the propriety of the expenditures and what exactly it is spent on. It would have been appropriate if the states have created a structure to the federal one so that the expenditure of the funds can be tracked and value for money determined.
“But the federal SURE-P structure at the star level appear to have been politicised and an opportunity to settle political associates of the ruling party.”
In order to get the maximum benefits of the programme, the group in the report recommended that details of the activities of SURE-P should be made available to all Nigerians.
It also recommended that all SURE-P funds should be released and cash-backed to ensure continued and timely completion of projects.
In February, this year when the Senate readjusted the 2015 Appropriation Bill, it also cut the allocation for the Subsidy Re-Investment and Empowerment Programme, SURE-P, by N81 billion, from N102.50 billion to N21.03 billion, saying it was due to the fall in the price of crude and advised that details of SURE-P projects to be executed should be attached to the annual budget estimates for approval by the National Assembly.
During the first week of November, this year, the Senate went several steps further when it urged President Buhari to investigate all expenditures made under the Subsidy Re-investment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P).
The lawmakers specifically urged the President to ensure that every kobo spent on SURE-P and other poverty alleviation programmes is accounted for.
With President Buhari’s decision to sound SURE-P’s death knell, citizens are not mourning the demise of an agency set up with the objective of alleviating their circumstances. Rather, many now wait with bated breath, in expectations of astounding revelations about how humongous sums in the mind-boggling ranges of hundreds of billions of Naira took flight.
For how long would this wait be?
